Mission
To provide the highest quality training, clinical services, and research opportunities within a nationally recognized academic medical center that serves primarily an urban, culturally and economically diverse, medically underserved population.
Our psychology community will foster knowledge, skills, and professional practices that:
- enhance critical thinking and the generation, evaluation, and application of research findings
- encourage the use of prevention strategies and evidence-based treatment modalities
- emphasize effective culturally responsive approaches to individual and community challenges including trauma, disasters, and health disparities
- foster collaborative interdisciplinary approaches in direct care and the interface of systems
- ensure clinical and academic leadership development
Our aim is to provide a superior level of clinical training in psychology, such that interns understand and make use of information derived from the interface of science, psychological theory, and clinical practice. Within the context of a competent generalist model, interns will develop clinical knowledge and skills in areas of special expertise.
To accomplish these overarching goals, the internship has identified the following program goals for internship training:
Aim 1: To develop competence in scholarly inquiry and the application of current scientific knowledge to practice, including the generation, evaluation, and application of empirical research.
Aim 2: To develop competence in theories and methods of psychological assessment and diagnosis in general clinical psychology and areas of specialty expertise.
Aim 3: To develop competence in theories and methods of effective psychotherapeutic intervention in general clinical psychology and areas of specialty expertise, with emphasis on the provision of evidenced-based treatment models.
Aim 4: To develop competence in professional conduct, ethics and legal issues, including ongoing professional development and appropriate use of supervision and/or consultation.
Aim 5: To develop competence in individual and cultural differences, with emphasis on sensitivity and responsiveness to individual differences in service delivery and professional practice.
Aim 6: To develop competence in professional consultation, with emphasis on working with multidisciplinary teams and professionals from a variety of fields.
Aim 7: To develop competence in clinical supervision with individuals from diverse backgrounds.
We provide the opportunity for interns to broaden their clinical experiences with a diverse group of patient populations. Within the Adult and the Child Tracks, we can provide ample clinical experience with other populations for the intern who has a desire to gain additional experiences outside of their primary area of interest.
We select interns each year from approximately 70 applicants, and attempt to bring together trainees from different institutions and with different personal and training backgrounds to enhance personal interchange and professional stimulation. We train interns only in those clinical settings where our full-time faculty is actively involved.
The Psychology Division is part of a combined Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department, which affords considerable opportunity for diverse training on both the Adult and Child Tracks. Interns consistently have discovered and taken advantage of a previously overlooked or undiscovered clinical training opportunity within the medical complex, and we strongly encourage such individual exploration.
Opportunities for involvement are regularly updated via a newsletter. The latest issue can be accessed here.
