Clinical Psychology Student Handbook 2011

Clinical Psychology Student Handbook 2011

9-XXX Practica and Externship

Chapter 9. On-Campus Practica, Externship, and Advanced Clinical Training

It is essential for students to keep track of their clinical hours on an ongoing basis from the beginning of the program, to facilitate application for internships. The internship application requires an extensive documentation of hours, and a student who keeps track of hours throughout the program will find it much easier to fill out this form and will not forget any hours. The form that current intern applicants must fill out can be found at http://www.appic.org/ . The Director of Clinical Training will pass along suggested spreadsheets or databases with which to keep track of hours. For further information, see Chapter 12, Internship.

The first psychotherapy practicum in the program is the Practicum in Individual Psychotherapy (PSY 907 and 908), taken in the second year. In this practicum, the clients are CUA Counseling Center clients, with the supervision done by the core clinical faculty. Students have one supervisor in the fall and a different supervisor in the spring. Supervisors are assigned by the clinical faculty.

Beyond this initial practicum, clinical students are minimally required to complete two 30-week externship placements. Students may also elect to complete one or both of the on-campus elective practica, described below.

On-Campus Elective Practica

PSY 914, 915, 916 Practicum in Assessment (with Dave Missar). An assessment practicum for advanced students, in which students perform evaluations on members of the community and thus gain experience in integrating their assessment knowledge. Prerequisites: Personality Assessment: Projective Methods or Personality Assessment: Self-Report Methods, taken prior to (preferred) or concurrently with the practicum; must be at least a third-year student.

PSY 928 Practicum in Family Therapy I (with Barry Wagner). Students participate in a team format treating families, using a one-way mirror and family systems approach. (Pre- or co-requisite: Developmental Psychopathology, Child Psychotherapy, Family Therapy, or Couple and Family Interaction.) Additional semester of this practicum: PSY 929 Practicum in Family Therapy II (1 credit). Continuation of PSY 928, prerequisites: PSY 928 and consent of instructor. Also available: PSY 927 Observation of Family Therapy (1 credit). Observation only--no prerequisite, and PSY 930 Practicum in Family Therapy II (3 credits), which is the same as PSY 929 with additional readings (prerequisites are PSY 928 and consent of instructor).

Students are evaluated at the end of each on-campus practicum with the Practicum Evaluation Form (see end of this chapter).

Externship

General information. Detailed program policies and procedures regarding all clinical training are provided in the Clinical Practica and Externship Policies and Procedures Guide (“Practicum P&P”), which is included as an Appendix to this handbook. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with the various guidelines, and to abide by them.

The externship is a two-semester placement that provides clinical training outside of the Department of Psychology. Prior to a clinical student being allowed to take a placement at an externship, the site must be approved by the clinical faculty. Most externships are 16 hours per week each semester, but they range from 8 to 20 hours, depending on the requirements of the agency. Most externships do not pay trainees, although there are one or two exceptions. Each semester of the externship is a three-credit course (PSY 909, 910), and is graded on a Pass-Fail basis.

In order to begin an externship, the student must be in good academic standing (i.e., not on academic probation; see Chapter 7, Evaluation of Student Performance and Grievance Procedures). If placed on probation during the course of the externship, he or she is required to inform the training supervisor at the externship site.

Selecting and applying for externship. Those students who decide to complete an externship training experience typically do so in their third and/or fourth year. The externship application procedure at CUA is coordinated by a member of the clinical faculty (currently David Jobes), who holds a meeting with all interested students in January or early February. There is a web site that provides information on the various externships in the area, including their application procedures: http://psychology.gmu.edu/graduate/clinical/extern. Additionally, many externships send information that is compiled in a notebook that is kept in the student lounge; only externships that have been approved are included in this notebook. There are numerous institutions that have a history of accepting CUA students. Students who have been on externships are generally the best source of information regarding particular placements. Most sites have an application deadline of early March.

In order to decide where to apply for externship, think about where you would like to work once you’re done and work backwards from there. What kind of internship would put you in the best position to get that kind of job? What kinds of externships would put you in the best position of getting that type of internship? Talk it over with your advisor and other faculty. If you are not sure what you want to do ultimately, do two different kinds of externships so you don’t narrow your options (e.g., if you’re unsure, don’t do two Counseling Center externships because that will limit your chances of getting a hospital internship if that’s what you decide you want). More information can be found in the “Practicum P&P” p. 8 (see appendix).

As noted above, the clinical faculty must approve all externship placement sites. If you are interested in working at a site that is not yet approved, the procedure to obtain approval is for the new externship site to contact the director of clinical training to obtain a copy of the CUA Externship Information Form. The externship site training director should complete the form and return it to the DCT at least 2 months before the student would accept the placement. The form requests such information as the populations served, time commitments, identity of supervisors, nature of the training (interventions and/or assessment batteries taught, theoretical orientation, etc.) and supervision hours. More

Most students apply to more than one facility. Placements generally request a vita, one to three letters of recommendation, a transcript, and an individual interview; beyond that, some also require procedures such as detailed written applications. It is strongly recommended that you request letters of recommendation more than a month before they are due, to leave sufficient time for faculty and others to write and print them (remember that letter writers typically are receiving multiple requests at that time of year). Note: a lot of the information included in the Internship chapter (Chapter 12) will be very useful for externship too, such as questions you could be asked on the interview, although externship interviews will take into account that the student has less clinical experience. There is also a document in the Internship chapter by alumnus Steve Wong that includes advice on long-range planning in order to make yourself a competitive internship applicant.

Notification day guidelines and accepting an externship. The clinical directors of the various programs in the Washington, DC area coordinate a common day for the notification of acceptance for many of the externships in this area. In recent years this has been the second Monday in April beginning at 9 a.m. There are several guidelines that both placements and students must follow.

·  Placements notify students of their acceptances by telephone.

·  Offers must be accepted or rejected by 1:00 pm that same day.

·  Once an offer is made, the student has two hours to consider the offer, and may not hold more than one offer during that time.

·  Externship sties may not provide students with information regarding their status or ranking prior to 9 a.m. on notification day.

·  Students may not attempt to elicit information from sites regarding their status or ranking prior to notification day.

·  A candidate who is no longer being considered by an externship site should be notified by the site at the earliest possible date in advance of notification day.

Students should check with the Director of Clinical Training for the deadlines and any procedural changes for the current year.

Important: some of the sites in the DC area, as well as most sites in the Baltimore area, do not participate in the consortium, and thus are not subject to the common notification date. If you accept an externship from a non-consortium site prior to the consortium deadline, you must notify the remaining sites to which you have applied so they can drop you from consideration.

Clinical Training Plan form. Students are required to complete the Clinical Training Plan form with their supervisors, and submit it to the Director of Clinical Training by the third week of the placement. A copy of the form is included at the end of this chapter (it is subject to revision, please be sure to use the most up-to-date form). The form provides an opportunity for students and their supervisor to develop goals for the training experience, and to agree upon the details of the training and supervision experiences. The form must be completed and submitted in a timely manner in order for the clinical hours to be counted, to ensure malpractice insurance coverage, and to obtain a grade for the course.

Evaluation of students. All externship training facilities must provide the Director of Clinical Training (DCT) with a written student evaluation in December and May. Supervisors are requested to use the program’s Externship and Advanced Clinical Training Evaluation Form (the current version is at the end of this chapter). Towards the end of each semester the DCT will email you a copy of the form and a deadline for receipt of the completed form. You are responsible for ensuring that the completed form is returned in a timely manner, so that you can be assigned a grade for the course. See the “Practicum P&P” for more (pp. 3-5). (Appendix).

Student evaluations of sites. Students are expected to provide feedback and information regarding the sites at the conclusion of their training time, using the Externship Student Site Review (see end of this chapter). The feedback serves two purposes (a) it provides critical information to the program regarding the quality of the training provided by the site, thereby helping us to ensure that sites are continuing to provide training that is in keeping with our program goals and objectives; (b) it provides very helpful information to students who are interested in the site in the future. Students may elect to complete the form anonymously. Forms are posted on the program Blackboard site for review by future students, unless you request otherwise on the form.

The Clinical Case Conference. Beginning with the class entering CUA in Fall 2009, all students intending to apply for internship in the following academic year must present a case at the Clinical Case Conference in the Spring semester. The Case Conference is attended by the various students and their clinical faculty advisors (a minimum of two clinical faculty must be present). It provides an opportunity for faculty to rate a number of clinical competencies, including diagnostic, treatment planning, integrating science and practice, case conceptualization, sensitivity to diversity issues) in advance of approving students for internship. Faculty evaluate the students using the Clinical Case Conference Rating Form (see the Practicum Policy and Procedures Guide, in the Appendix of this document, for details and a copy of the form). Students are expected to obtain minimum ratings of “satisfactory” on the scale. Note that all students will have had a previous opportunity to conduct a clinical case conference at the end of their Practicum in Individual Psychotherapy, in the 2nd year, consistent with the program’s emphasis on training that is sequential, graded, and cumulative.

Faculty review of assessment reports. At the end of every academic year, one of two faculty knowledgeable in clinical assessment review all (de-identified) assessment reports completed by students in any of their clinical training settings. This provides an additional level of quality control regarding students’ clinical assessment training. Faculty provide feedback to students using the assessment items of the CUA Competence Evaluation Rating Form (CERF) (with minimum acceptable ratings of “Needs Attention”) in addition to qualitative comments, and any problem areas are flagged for detailed discussion with the student.

Advanced Clinical Training

Advanced Clinical Training (ACT) is a course that is designed for students who are doing clinical training that is not a required component of our courses or practica, not part of the initial two-semester externship, and not part of the required internship. Note: students who are completing a second or third year of “externship” training (typically in the fourth year or later) must register for Advanced Clinical Training (PSY 970); the externship courses (PSY 909, 910) can be taken only once. Registering for this course and completing the Clinical Training Plan with your supervisor (and submitting it to the DCT) are program requirements, and allow the program to approve your training, verify that you are being supervised by a licensed clinical psychologist, and verify that you have malpractice insurance that covers your work. See Chapter 4 for further details on ACT. In order to be approved to supervise a student in ACT, the supervisor must agree to provide an evaluation of the student’s work in December and May. The form that is used is the Externship and Advanced Clinical Training Evaluation Form (the current version is at the end of this chapter). Towards the end of each semester the DCT will email you a copy of the form and a deadline for receipt of the completed form. You are responsible for ensuring that the completed form is returned in a timely manner, so that you can be assigned a grade for the course.

A student who registers for ACT (PSY 970, 971, or 972) must receive approval for the training by completing the Clinical Training Plan form along with the supervisor, and submitting it to the Director of Clinical Training for approval by no later than the third week of the placement. If the form is not completed in that time frame, then clinical hours will not be counted, malpractice insurance is not valid, and registration is not complete.

PSY 970 is the usual course number for which to register. Whenever registering for this 0-credit, 0-billing hour course, students must also register for something else that is billed at least 1 credit of tuition (e.g., a course, dissertation guidance). There is just one course number for the 0-credit Advanced Clinical Training, PSY 970, regardless of whether it's for fall or spring semester. So in general, students who have not yet completed dissertation and orals and are doing additional clinical training should register for 970 in either Fall or Spring. PSY 970 can be registered for multiple times.