The Internship
Positions
We anticipate recruiting five interns for the 2008-2009 training year. The number of slots can vary slightly from year to year based on programming and budgetary variables. We have five full-time doctoral psychology interns on-board for 07-08. The year begins in September, two days after Labor Day, and extends for 12 months. Full-time training slots are 2,000-hour positions.
Stipend and Benefits
The stipend for the 08-09 year is approximately $17,000. Health insurance coverage is available at Riverbend's group rates. An additional $1,800 will be available to help pay for the agency's health insurance if necessary. Interns receive ten holidays and up to twenty days of paid leave (which can be used for vacation, illness or personal leave). Professional liability coverage will be ensured. Interns have free access to the agency’s Employee Assistance Program. Please note unused earned leave time may not be converted to cash and interns are required to remain in the internship for the entire training year.
Primary and Secondary Sites
Interns have a primary site placement where they spend about 60% of their time and a secondary placement where they spend about 40% of their time. These placements extend for the entire internship year. Occasionally, programs have been individually tailored to take into account various trainee preferences: for example, a greater proportion of time at the primary placement.
Supervision
Interns receive a minimum of two hours of supervision each week with a licensed psychologist. Additional site-based supervision is provided in secondary placements and at times is offered by a provider that is not a licensed psychologist but has expertise and/or is a senior clinician from another discipline. Interns also receive one or more hours per week of group supervision at their placement site(s), usually in an interdisciplinary team meeting/case conference format. In addition, the Director of Training meets with interns in a small group supervision session weekly for one to three hours. The IPPP utilizes videotaped review of sessions as an integral component of supervision in both the individual and group formats.
Seminars and Formal Training
Orientation: During the first weeks of internship, a series of orientation seminars is offered to introduce the interns to the agency as a whole, and to the Internship Program. General content areas covered include: the IPPP model of training, goals, and objectives, the agency mission, introductions to clinical programs and program directors, introduction to the internship program's structure and requirements, and introduction to risk management and emergency procedures. Interns also participate in Riverbend's new staff orientation, which covers issues such as quality assurance, paperwork, working with managed care companies, policies and procedures, and health and safety. Individual supervisors and other program-specific staff also assist in orienting the intern to individual program policies, procedures, and cultures.
The formal training seminars, held each Friday from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm, offer a year-long structured series of didactic and discussion format meetings consisting of presentations by the director of training, faculty members, RCMH staff members, and outside presenters. General topics are covered on a rotating basis and they include: Intervention, Assessment, Professional Development, Ethics, Diversity and Differences, and Current Literature. Each of these topics is subdivided by area of focus.
Intervention Seminar sessions consist of Individual, Family, and Systems approaches to clinical intervention. The focus is on treatment issues relevant to Community Mental Health Settings and SPMI/SED populations. Seminars often include sessions on psychosis, spectrum disorders, sexual abuse/trauma, as well as a host of other diagnostic categories. Approaches to intervention are also covered. For example: play therapy, DBT, and psychoanalytic approaches to personality disorders. The intervention seminar also addresses other intervention roles for psychologists such as consultant (school-based and primary care settings, for example) and supervisor.
Assessment Seminar sessions encompass psychological evaluations for individuals, Evidence-Based Practice, and Program Evaluation. The individual psychological evaluations seminar focuses on the wide range of assessment techniques and instruments used in assessing community mental health populations. It emphasizes practical application of interns' testing skills and knowledge to the specific demands of the Community Mental Health setting. Report writing and the presentation of test data to consumers, families, and multi-disciplinary treatment providers will be reviewed. The specific amount of time focused on particular instruments or approaches will be based on an initial assessment of the intern group’s competence and comfort with assessment and report writing.
Evidence-based practice and program evaluation sections of the assessment seminars include both didactic elements as well as a “real-world” experience. The CEO, an adjunct faculty member for the IPPP, educates the interns about the role of evaluation in the local Riverbend setting, and about practices common in the evaluation of mental health services. Subsequently, the interns assume the responsibility, as a group, to plan, implement, and evaluate a program and/or division of the organization and present their findings to Riverbend staff and administrators.
The Professional Development, Ethics, and Diversity and Differences seminar sessions are designed to facilitate the professional development of interns as psychologists who approach the practice of psychology as a ‘scientist.’ Interns are taught the values and skills associated with becoming astute observers through faculty/staff presentations and subsequent discussions that inform them in techniques and pitfalls of observation (e.g. participant observation, the reciprocal effects of the observer and the observed, empathic observation/intuition, and self-observation or self-examination). Interns are evaluated on their ability to implement these skills.
The professional development seminar includes assigned readings, didactic presentation, structured homework activities, and discussions regarding the local clinical scientist model. This seminar is designed as a forum for developing psychologists to refine their professional identities as they make the transition from graduate school to real-world clinical practice. Understanding and adapting to professional roles, obtaining post-docs, becoming licensed, and current career issues, etc., are the subject matter of the Professional Development section.
A strong emphasis is placed on interns’ understanding and application of ethical standards to their practice. A seminar series addresses this by offering discussions where interns share ethical dilemmas they come upon. Interns are required to identify and present situations they are facing that present an ethical issue, select all of the ethical codes established by the APA that are relevant, and to plot an appropriate course of action to address the issue(s).
Our efforts to educate interns about diversity issues include both formal, didactic components, and in the context of clinical supervision. The diversity seminar series begins with self-exploration—i.e. examining one’s own personal history, including cultural biases and beliefs and an exploration of how our own cultural backgrounds influence how we approach our work. Guest presenters from among RCMH staff lead later sessions exploring several topics of particular relevance to our work in this local setting: local New Hampshire cultures, internalized oppression and racism, the cultural implications mental illness and poverty, and working with gay and lesbian clients.
The Current Research/Literature Seminar sessions are devoted to the review and analysis of current literature. Each seminar requires interns to select a professional article to present during the seminar that addresses an area of interest, relative expertise, and/or an issue recently encountered in practice. These seminars are specifically designed to encourage and instruct interns in the integration of science and practice, including the application of evidence-based practices to the local populations with whom they work.
Continuing Education and In-service Training: Riverbend sponsors a program of in-service training as an APA-approved provider of continuing education workshops for psychologists and other mental health professionals. Relevant staff development activities are available to interested interns. In recent years, the Intern program has sponsored a series of in-service training sessions on topics in supervision, for interns and clinical supervisors. This series is designed both to supplement interns’ training in this area and to help internship supervisors develop increased expertise.
Other Training Opportunities: Other opportunities vary from year to year. In recent years, interns have attended state-sponsored day-long workshops on relevant topics in community mental health.
Interns are encouraged to attend Grand Rounds at New Hampshire Hospital (NHH) in Concord. NHH is the statewide psychiatric hospital and a Dartmouth-Hitchcock affiliate. IPPP interns also have library privileges at NHH, which has extensive psychiatric, neurological, and psychological holdings.
Research Opportunities: Some rich research possibilities exist at Riverbend Community Mental Health due to the extensive clinical databases available. Certain clinical sites collect routine test data (e.g., the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist) on all admissions which, when combined with the wealth of other diagnostic, demographic and intervention data, make for a rich potential research harvest. Although most of the organization's resources are devoted to service and training and not to active research, staff psychologists are available to consult on possible research designs and analyses. The agency recently provided financial support for an intern’s dissertation intervention aimed at preventing youth violence as part of our efforts to assist the community in this area. Several other interns have worked on dissertation data or write-up while here.
Weekly Time Estimates for Interns (in hours)
| Clinical time | ||
| Therapy | 14 -18 | |
| Testing | 4 - 6 | |
| Individual Supervision | 3 - 4 | |
| Seminars and Other Training | 3 - 5 | |
| Clinical Meetings/Group Supervision | ||
| Case conferences; Disposition; Staffings | 2 - 3 | |
| Clinical Recordkeeping | 4 - 6 | |
| Case Management (phone calls, letter writing) | 5 - 6 | |
| Administrative time | ||
| Case Preparation, travel, staff meetings, informal consultation | 4 – 6 | |
| Total | 39 - 54 | |
| Mean | 47 | |
Based on a 40-hour workweek, with an average of 4 hours per week in seminars, it is estimated that of the 36 remaining hours, 22 are spent on-site at the primary placement and 14 are spent on-site at the secondary placement.
Previous interns have suggested that it is wise to plan on the higher end of these estimates.
Commitment to Diversity
Riverbend is committed to diversity among its staff, trainee and client populations for many practical and ethical reasons. Our geographic service area tends to be limited in the range of ethnic and racial diversity among its inhabitants (Merrimack County, NH, is 96.4% white and no nonwhite group represents as much as 1% of the population). Nonetheless, we are eager to deal with the challenge this may represent for nonwhite interns, and past minority interns have been very successful here. We are committed to seeking and supporting the most qualified and diverse intern group available. Riverbend serves an unusually broad range of socioeconomic class diversity. There is, of course, considerable diversity represented in other, nonracial areas such as nationality, religion, sexual orientation, political identification, and age, among others. We also have a long organizational history of training and advancing women psychologists, clinicians and interns.
Facilities and Resources
All interns will be furnished with sufficient office and clinical space, and the program supplies equipment for audio and video taping. Specialized space for testing or group therapy is available. Testing resources include a centralized testing library that belongs to the internship program and computer-scoring facilities for several instruments. Additional testing resources are also located at various placement sites.
Riverbend has been committed to computerization for some time and continues actively to expand the availability of computers. Interns have access to both internal and Internet e-mail. Computerized record keeping and word processing have become the norm. An electronic clinical record is used in all agency locations.
Psychology library facilities are available at New Hampshire Hospital in Concord. Extensive university resources are available at Dartmouth College or the University of New Hampshire. The agency also provides access to a computer database of psychiatric journals, as well as to the Internet.
Evaluation Processes
Intern evaluation is based on the goals and objectives set forth by the program. Formal evaluation meetings are held four times a year with the intern, his/her supervisors and the director of training all present. Feedback is given after the first three months, after the first six months, at nine months and at the conclusion of the training year. Faculty case presentations, including a review of a videotaped therapy session, are held in conjunction with each evaluation period. Less formal feedback, of course, is available throughout the year, but especially during the first few months. Samples of the evaluation forms used are available for review at any time. Interns are asked to evaluate their supervisors and the internship program formally at the end of the training year. Interns also provide written evaluations of each seminar at the end of major training segments. The interns are invited to attend a program faculty meeting at mid-year to provide faculty with verbal feedback about the intern program.
Personnel Policies
Psychology interns are regarded as Riverbend employees, and are subject to most of the same personnel policies. Interns will receive an employee handbook that details relevant guidelines regarding employee rights and responsibilities, procedures for resolving employee complaints, employment practices, etc. They also receive a copy of the due process procedure developed specifically to address intern concerns.
Attendance Policy
Interns are encouraged to use their leave time benefits thoughtfully, and they are expected to arrange appropriate clinical coverage with their supervisors. In order to take any specific day off, the intern must get permission from the supervisor responsible for the placement where the intern normally would be working. Permission to take off a training day (Friday) must be obtained from the Director of Training. It is expected that interns will miss no more than five training days per year.
Successful Completion
Successful completion of the internship requires:
- Completion of 2000 hours of service, including direct client contact and support hours
- Participation in the four quarterly formal evaluations
- Demonstration of competence in the internship's stated goals and objectives.
- Successful participation in the formal internship seminar series.
Problem Resolution and Grievance Policy