Predoctoral Internship Training in Clinical Psychology

The professional practice of psychology as a health care profession in a children’s hospital setting is the primary focus of our internship. The internship’s educational philosophy and training model is broadly based on the Scientist-Practitioner Model for the Professional Practice of Psychology as described by Belar and Perry (1992). The program also ascribes to the recommendations for training of pediatric psychologists proposed by Spirito and colleagues (2003). 

As a Behavioral Health Division in a children’s hospital, we strive to provide broad-based training in clinical child and pediatric psychology. Interns are referred to as "psychology residents" by the medical staff and are well-respected for their expertise. The initial focus is on the development of working relationships with families and other professional staff and the development of communication and interviewing skills and consultation. The goal is for interns to formulate case conceptualizations and to link these formulations to empirically supported intervention strategies within a pediatric psychology setting.

Ethical, legal, professional and diversity issues are addressed as they apply to consultation, assessment and intervention. Interns are exposed to a broad spectrum of patient populations, and gain extensive experience in case/problem formulation, prevention/intervention, evaluation/diagnosis and consultation. Evidence-based clinical practice forms a cornerstone of our training program. 

Opportunities exist for gaining experiences with children and adolescents presenting with diabetes, asthma, cancer, transplant difficulties, gastrointestinal issues, elimination disorders, headaches and pain disorders, seizure disorders, cardiac complications, cerebral palsy, weight management concerns, autism spectrum disorder, feeding and eating disorders, and other psychiatric issues such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, somatoform disorder, and many other adjustment and family difficulties. 

Supervision is a strength of our program. We strive to make supervision interactive and dynamic in that interns and faculty actively exchange ideas as they integrate research and practice. Critical thinking and hypothesis formulation and testing are essential ingredients of the supervision experience. In supervision, trainees examine individual patient characteristics and family issues, and begin to develop a multicultural perspective to assessment and intervention. There is a focus on the integration of scientific methods and clinical practice so that interns can research medical and psychological issues prior to beginning supervision, a consultation, or a psychological evaluation. Interns formulate empirically supported case conceptualizations and link these conceptualizations to treatment plans. While we anticipate that interns arrive with a solid foundation of these skills, typically there are considerable differences across competencies, between interns. We place particular focus on meeting each intern at their developmental level to allow each trainee to develop a confident solid foundation for the systematic application of scientific knowledge to practice. 

All interns have completed their dissertation proposals. If not completed prior to internship, trainees are supported to actively complete their dissertations during their internship. We have supported all of our trainees to attend the national Child Health Psychology Conference for the last two meetings. The program provides several didactic seminars (Assessment, Therapy, Supervision and Pediatric Psychology) aimed at establishing a consistent foundation of evaluation, consultation and intervention knowledge.