Rotations and Curriculum — Clinical Health Psychology Doctoral Internship at St. Rita's Medical Center
The overarching aim of our program is to cultivate psychologists who provide evidence-based, compassionate, and culturally sensitive clinical practice. Our graduates will become proficient in conducting thorough case evaluations and conceptualizations, and delivering intervention strategies tailored to the patient’s needs and their situation. This training approach encompasses a blend of didactic sessions, clinical experiences and structured supervision to ensure comprehensive skill development.
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Rotation Schedule
The bariatric surgery, outpatient, neuropsychology clinic and mental health and assessment rotations are housed within our outpatient psychology clinic located at 770 W. High Street, Suite 300.
Our main hospital is connected to our outpatient offices in the 770 building via walkways, making it convenient for interns to move between buildings.
The rehab rotation is located within the hospital on 8K, which is our acute inpatient rehab unit. The intern will perform bedside consults and participate in rehab team meetings.
Bariatric Psychology
The intern on the bariatric psychology rotation will provide pre-surgical bariatric evaluations to determine candidacy for outpatient bariatric surgery. The intern will also provide brief treatment aimed at improving patients’ psychological symptoms and problematic eating behaviors that could interfere with long-term weight management success. The intern will co-facilitate support groups throughout this rotation to promote short- and long-term behavioral changes. Other opportunities include brief follow up with patients, participation in interdisciplinary staff meetings and implementing psychotherapy groups.
Rehabilitation Psychology
The intern on the rehabilitation psychology will provide bedside evaluations and provide evidence-based psychological services within an acute rehab setting. Reasons for consultation include adjustment to strokes, brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, competency evaluations, phantom limb pain, irritable bowel syndrome, motor vehicle accident victims requiring inpatient rehabilitation and those with conversion disorders. Other opportunities include participation in rehab team meetings, co-facilitating weekly mindfulness groups, attending and providing staff trainings and co-training with medical students and residents.
Interns will carry a small outpatient general mental health caseload during this rotation.
Mental Health and Assessment
The intern on the mental health rotation will provide interview-based assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning and psychotherapy. This clinic is the primary outpatient clinic for the department. Interns will provide evidence-based psychotherapy for a variety of mental health concerns. Regular meetings with the rotation supervisor provide support for dealing with new and problematic cases. There will be opportunities for interns to learn evidence-based care for trauma with a focus on written exposure therapy (WET) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT).
Health Psychology Groups
Interns will also be co-facilitating groups focused on pain management and cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i). Each intern will experience at least one full cycle of pain management groups and one full round of our CBT-I group protocol.
Neuropsychology Clinic
Interns will be required to complete two days per month in psychology testing clinic for 12 months. Interns will administer and score neuropsychological testing. Reasons for testing could include learning disability, autism, dementia and diagnostic clarity.
Supervision
Interns will receive daily supervision from their primary supervisor on the current rotation. The intern will discuss each new case with the supervisor, along with any difficult cases the intern is following. Interns can also request meetings with supervisors for discussion of other areas such as individualized feedback or professional growth.
Interns from all rotations also participate in a one-hour, weekly group supervision with the director of the psychology internship program. Interns will take turns presenting a case, paired with a question or topic for discussion for the group. Interns will receive a minimum of four hours of supervision per week, with no less than two hours of individual supervision per week.
The intern may have the opportunity to provide “umbrella” supervision to doctoral trainees working within our program. Our current supervisors are Dr. Esther Strahan (rehabilitation rotation), Dr. Samantha Cain (bariatric rotation and group supervision), Dr. Thomas Hull (mental health and assessment rotation) and Dr. Kurt Brickner for back up supervision should a primary supervisor be unavailable.
Didactic Curriculum
Our didactic offerings form a key part of the training package. There are four required components of our formal curriculum. These are:
- Weekly Core didactics with varied topics (Fridays at 9 a.m.)
- Weekly Cultural and ethical considerations seminar (Fridays at 11 a.m.)
- Weekly Grand Rounds with medical residents (Wednesdays at noon)
- Monthly Neuroscience Grand Rounds (Tuesdays at 7 a.m. via Zoom)
Core Didactics
Core didactics are held for an hour once per week. Psychopharmacology, psychopathology and psychotherapy, career development and professional issues are among the topics included in our psychology core curriculum.
The medical knowledge and psychopharmacology curriculum provides a general introduction to pathophysiology and understanding drug actions and the basic classes of drugs use in psychiatry. Interns also can request other topics to include in the didactic schedule to tailor the didactics to the needs of each intern class.
Professional issues include the business of health care, psychology as a health profession, defining a career path and interdisciplinary functioning.
Each week, we will spend an hour of additional didactics time discussing topics related to ethics, gender and cultural diversity.
Grand Rounds and Clinical Presentations
Grand Rounds and related clinical presentations are Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m. in the GME Center Auditorium; lunch is provided.
Attendance is required of all psychology interns and medical residents. Faculty members will also attend. Attending these presentations will allow interns to learn more about specific medical conditions and about the challenges of delivering health care in a medical environment.
Additionally, it helps position psychology as an integral part of the health care team.
One Tuesday per month, from 7 to 8 a.m., interns will attend Neurology Grand Rounds at St. Vincent’s Medical Center via Zoom.
Completion of Internship and Evaluation
All interns are formally evaluated every four months, which is the conclusion of every major rotation. These evaluations are completed by at least one licensed psychologist who provided direct supervision during the evaluation period. Additional evaluations will be completed semi-annually (approximately six months into internship) and annually (at the conclusion of internship) by the program director and Clinical Competency Committee.
To be certified as having completed this internship, the intern must comply with the following:
- Complete 12 months of service.
- Receive a passing score on final annual internship competency evaluation
- Pass three case presentations (one in each major rotation).
- Attend at least 80 percent of all didactic presentations.
- Attend at least 80 percent of supervision sessions (individual and group).