Doctoral psychology internship goals and philosophy

The primary aim of the doctoral internship in clinical psychology at Sharp HealthCare is to support the transformation of interns from graduate students to professional health service psychologists capable of entry-level general clinical practice that is solidly grounded in the empirical science and scholarly practices of psychology.

Building upon the fund of knowledge and skill our interns acquire in graduate school, our program utilizes practitioner-scholar and junior colleague models to help accomplish aims and goals. Embedded in these models is the belief that professional identity and knowledge are not static phenomena that end once a graduate degree or clinical license is obtained. Rather, professional identity and knowledge is informed through lifelong learning and evolves as the field of psychology evolves. Furthermore, we recognize and value the knowledge, skill, wisdom and lived experience of interns, from the moment they arrive. Over the years, interns have contributed immeasurably to the quality of clinical programs and to the training program itself. Many of our psychology staff will say that working with interns is near the top of their reasons for working at Sharp, and many were once interns themselves, including the Training Director. Supervisors and other members of the interdisciplinary team take seriously their responsibility to learn from, learn with and advocate for doctoral interns.

Interns are encouraged (and faculty are committed) to continuous development — utilizing empiricism and critical thinking and integrating scientific literature as a basis for diagnostic assessment, case-conceptualization, intervention, consultation, supervision, program development and outcome evaluation. These ideals are fostered and strongly encouraged at Sharp HealthCare through ongoing supervision, modeling, teaching and mentoring, seeking to integrate the scientific, scholarly and practice functions of the profession.

We endorse the recommendations of the National Conference on Scientist-Practitioner Education and Training for the Professional Practice of Psychology (Belar & Perry, 1992) as follows: the process of critical thinking, hypothesis testing and other elements of the scientific method should be engendered and integrated into all experiential activities throughout the training process, the experiential component of practice should be broad and general rather than narrow and specific and that the experiential component should include several different levels of experiences across a broad variety of settings and populations.

We apply developmental and competency-based models of supervision (Falender et al., 2004; Falender & Shafranske, 2004, 2008, 2020) — recognizing where interns are when they join us and building incrementally from there to enhance competence on prescribed, targeted goals and objectives.

As an APA-accredited doctoral internship in clinical psychology, adherent to the standards of accreditation, we focus on helping interns achieve an expected level of competence in the following nine domains:

Research
Ethical and legal standards
Individual and cultural diversity
Professional values, attitudes and behaviors
Communication and interpersonal skills
Assessment
Intervention
Supervision
Consultation and inter-professional/interdisciplinary skills

Each intern splits the year into two 6-month rotations consisting of an inpatient unit and an intensive outpatient program (IOP). They also attend weekly didactic seminars, supervise practicum students, make formal case presentations, conduct psychological assessments, and receive weekly a minimum of 4 hours of individual and group supervision — typically more. Supervisors are on-site and widely available. Interns often begin a rotation observing supervisors in their work and receive in-vivo supervision and feedback, which allows for increasingly independent practice that is appropriate to the developmental stage of the intern.

In most settings, rotation supervisors are actively involved in providing clinical service, and are able to directly model and frequently observe interns in practice. In a minority of settings, clinical supervisors are in clinical leadership/administrative positions and less involved in direct patient care. In these settings, although direct modeling of patient care by the supervisor is less likely, close supervision and consultation remains core.

In addition, there are valuable opportunities in many settings for interns to be exposed to (and collaborate in) the role of a professional psychologist in program development, quality management and leadership.

Another philosophical pillar upon which the program rests is that internship training should be individually tailored within each of the rotations and that training should build upon competencies gained in the previous rotation.

Although the range of clinical experiences on a given rotation is determined by the nature of the clinical program on that unit, supervisors are committed to striking a balance between the interns' extant knowledge and interests and the hospital's clinical service requirements.

This balance affords interns the opportunity to receive individually tailored internship activities based upon their prior experience, training and skill level, that are sequential, cumulative and graded in complexity.

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Doctoral psychology internship goals and philosophy