Why Psychiatrists and Psychologists Are Choosing Telehealth Careers with Dokotela

Australia does not have a shortage of interest in psychiatry. It has a shortage of psychiatrists in the places that need them most.

The Australian Government’s Psychiatry Supply and Demand Study found that in 2023, 85% of the country’s full-time-equivalent psychiatrists were working in metropolitan areas, while just 1.8% were based in rural and remote regions. The same modelling projects a national undersupply of 20.7% by 2048, with the Northern Territory facing a shortfall of nearly 84%. Over the past decade, median wait times for specialist mental health care have stretched from around two weeks to close to seven.

For a patient in a regional town, those numbers mean a long drive, a longer wait, or no appointment at all. For a specialist, they mean something different: the work that matters most is often hundreds of kilometres from where the jobs are advertised.

Telehealth resolves that mismatch, and in doing so, it has quietly changed what a psychiatry or psychology career can look like.

A career that isn’t defined by a postcode

The traditional model ties a specialist to a building. You practise where your consulting rooms are, and your patients come from a radius around them. That works well in Sydney or Melbourne. It works poorly for the millions of Australians outside those radii.

Specialists consulting from Dokotela’s platform work from wherever suits them and see patients across every state and territory. Between them, they now cover 100% of Australia’s regional areas, and in FY26 alone saw more than 26,000 new patients and delivered over 40,000 appointments. That reach isn’t a side effect of the model, it is the model.

If you have ever wanted to work in rural and remote mental health without relocating your family to do it, telehealth is how that becomes possible.

Choose the work you actually want to do

Because the referral pipeline is national rather than local, the caseload mix is broader than most single-site practices can offer. Specialists nominate their own areas of focus, which currently include:

·       ADHD and autism (ASD) assessments for adults and children

·       Child and adolescent psychiatry

·       Older persons’ mental health

·       Eating disorders

·       Addiction medicine

·       Perinatal and family work

·       Workplace rehabilitation, insurer programs and medico-legal reporting

·       PHN-funded programs supporting patients who could not otherwise afford care

You are not taking whatever walks through the door. You are consulting in the areas you trained for and want to keep developing.

No patient book to build, no clinic to run

The other barrier to private practice has nothing to do with clinical work. It is the lease, the reception roster, the billing software, the marketing, the years spent building referral relationships from scratch. Plenty of excellent clinicians stay in public roles they have outgrown simply because the setup cost of leaving is too high.

Dokotela removes that step entirely. GPs refer through established channels (HealthLink EDI, fax, secure email or online upload), and the Dokotela team triages each referral, matches it to the most appropriate specialist, schedules the appointment, sends reminders and provides the pre-assessment information before the consult begins. Patients get technical support directly from the team, not from their psychiatrist.

“Working with Dokotela provides me with a unique opportunity to see and help a great number of children, adolescents, and their families, with serious mental health problems, who would otherwise be lost to good psychiatric interventions, and importantly, without the hassle inherent in maintaining a private practice.”

— Dr Joan Haliburn, Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist

Specialists are well remunerated for their work, whether they consult two sessions a week or full time.

Flexibility that survives contact with real life

Flexibility is the most over-promised word in clinical recruitment, so it is worth hearing it described by someone using it.

“I started with Dokotela after my maternity leave and it was a great decision, especially when looking at switching from public to private practice. The admin staff are organised, they always try to make sure my schedule is full, I never have to worry about logistics or technology issues because there’s always someone available to help. I get a lot of flexibility with my schedule and they’re always happy to accommodate my needs around childcare.”

— Dr Samira Bhuiyan, Psychiatrist

A workforce gap you can help close from your own desk

Australia has roughly 4,300 practising psychiatrists (RANZCP, 2026) for a population of 27 million, distributed unevenly enough that where a person lives largely determines whether they get seen. Closing that gap will take more trainees, more funding and more time. It will also take models that put existing specialists in front of the patients who currently miss out.

That is the work happening on Dokotela’s platform every day, and there is room for more.‍

Visit the For Specialists page to book a confidential chat with our specialist manager and see whether the model fits how you want to practise.

‍

‍