I do phone sessions with my pdoc every other week (I see him one week, phone the next, next I see him, etc). Phone sessions are generally a lot shorter - in-person sessions are usually 40-60 minutes, phone usually around 15 minutes. I guess they're less in-depth.

I've called my regular T twice - once in crisis, once because I wanted advice/someone to ease my fears. The crisis one was fairly useless, until she called the on-call pdoc who increased my dosage of meds for 1 day. The advise/ease-my-fears one was very helpful.

And I've done a phone evaluation with my EMDR T once because her practice is a long drive for a 20-minute talk. I emailed her a few things beforehand, though, because I couldn't show them to her otherwise and I'd have to read them out loud - and as it was an overview, that wouldn't be clear.