Psychology Pre-Doctoral Internship

The internship only accepts students currently matriculated in an American Psychological Association accredited doctoral program in Clinical, Counseling or School Psychology.

Overview
Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Ohio State University have forged a partnership that offers outstanding opportunities in professional psychology education at the predoctoral and postdoctoral levels. Clinical, educational, and research activities are centered at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Nationwide Children’s Close To Home Behavioral Health Care Centers, offering students academically challenging, clinically relevant programs tailored to meet their unique needs within a rigorous curriculum.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital offers a dynamic learning environment in which nearly 2,500 students from multiple disciplines participate in clinical experiences annually. Nationwide Children’s Hospital is fortunate to be the only pediatric tertiary health care provider and the largest provider of behavioral health services to children and adolescents in central Ohio. With a service region that covers nearly half the state, Nationwide Children’s Hospital Behavioral Health Services provides over 160,000 hours of behavioral health services to more than 9,000 children and their families per year. The scope of our behavioral health services ensures that psychology interns are able to interact with professionals and patients from urban, suburban, and rural settings.

Goals
The program’s philosophy of training is based on the expectation that interns bring to the internship year solid backgrounds in the science and practice of psychology. The internship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital trains doctoral level clinical, counseling, and school psychology students in accordance with the scientist-practitioner model. This statement has several implications. First, the internship is viewed as a developmental process whereby trainees are provided with the knowledge and skills needed for increasingly independent practice over the course of the internship year, undertaken in the context of modeling, mentoring, teaching, and supervision. Second, by denoting trainees as “scientific practitioners” we are stating our commitment to furthering interns’ skills integrating the science and practice of psychology. Thirdly, training at our internship assumes interns have had exposure to and will gain additional experience with the major areas of assessment, intervention, and consultation. Consequently, internship training is designed so that interns gain experience in many areas of psychology, as well as develop some level of expertise in specific topic areas. Ethical, legal, professional, cultural and ethnic issues are addressed as they apply to assessment and intervention.

The internship program has identified five domains of competency that are specific targets for training. Those domains are:

Assessment
Intervention
Consultation and Interdisciplinary Relationships
Scientific Foundations and Research
Professionalism

These core competencies transcend theoretical orientations and clinical specialties, are essential to all activities of professional psychologists and are directly related to the quality of psychological services. Trainee growth and development is assessed on these competencies.

Clinical Orientation
Our Predoctoral Internship is designed to be a year devoted to clinical training in professional psychology. The internship year is viewed as a developmental process in which trainees are provided with the knowledge, experience and supervisory support necessary to develop increasingly independent functioning. This process is accomplished in the context of modeling, mentoring, teaching, and supervision. The faculty is committed to furthering interns’ skills integrating the science and practice of psychology. The faculty in both specialization tracks has a strong commitment to the multi-disciplinary approach to treatment, and offers interns opportunities to work with a variety of mental health and health care colleagues. Internship faculty has diverse theoretical orientations, and espouses behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, developmental, and systemic approaches.

Didactic Seminars
Interns from all four tracks take part in didactic seminars. Separate tracks have their own specialty seminars. As a group, all nine interns meet weekly for internship seminar. Topics are selected to be appropriate for interns in all four tracks and cover issues with regard to assessment, treatment, ethics, and multi-cultural issues.

View a list of seminars offered throughout the internship year.

Supervision
Interns in all tracks receive a minimum of 4 hours of face-to-face clinical supervision each week. Supervision includes both group and individual modalities, with at least half of the weekly supervision being one-on-one. Audio taping, videotaping, one way mirrors, direct observation and co-therapy are used as supervision tools. Over the course of the internship year, all interns receive supervision from a number of different faculty members. The internship faculty believes exposure to a variety of supervisory styles and perspectives furthers each intern's professional development, assists interns in acquiring a general set of competencies in professional psychology and exposes trainees to a number of specialty areas in the field.

Each intern will have a training faculty preceptor. The preceptor's role in the intern's direct clinical supervision varies based on the track and the intern's clincial activities. However, across all tracks, preceptors serve in several capacities, including:

Coordinating the intern’s training plan
Ensuring the intern’s experiences are consistent with the intern’s goals and objectives
Acting as a mentor regarding professional development issues
Providing an ongoing, supportive relationship
Monitoring progress throughout the year via direct contact and feedback from other supervisors
Providing feedback about performance
Acting as an advocate when difficulties with other faculty or interns arise
Providing support regarding dissertation completion

Research Opportunities
Internship faculty adheres to the scientist-practitioner model and our training program emphasizes an evidence-based approach to clinical practice. Consequently, opportunities exist for interns to participate in the ongoing research of an internship faculty member or interns may initiate their own project under the sponsorship of a faculty member. Descriptions of internship faculty research interests are listed on the supervisor's page of the web site.

The internship year at Nationwide Children's is designed as primarily a clinical endeavor. There are opportunities for interns to become involved in small research projects during their internship year. However, our policy is that prior to consideration for involvement in research, interns are making adequate progress toward defense of their dissertation.

Evaluation Process
Evaluation is an ongoing process and all supervisors and interns are encouraged to share feedback with each other throughout the year. Formal evaluations of interns are completed three times a year at four, eight and twelve months. Informal evaluations are completed at two, six and ten months. Interns are evaluated by all faculty members who have supervised them during that period of time. The intern's preceptor is responsible for conveying the results of these evaluations.

Interns also provide regular feedback to training staff. Group feedback is provided to individual supervisors. Additionally, interns complete program evaluations at six and twelve months. This feedback helps training staff address current issues, as well as make necessary changes for subsequent training classes.

Benefits

An annual stipend of $24,000
15 days of paid leave for vacation and sick time
Up to five days of personal leave for job interviews and home university-related activities
An allotment for reimbursement of professional expenses ($400)
Employee healthcare benefits may be purchased through Nationwide Children's Hospital
Faculty Appointment at The Ohio State University

Accreditation
The Nationwide Children’s Hospital predoctoral internship in professional psychology is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association Committee on Accreditation. You may contact the APA Committee on Accreditation at:

Office of Program Consultation & Accreditation
American Psychological Association
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242
(202) 336-5979
apaaccred@apa.org
http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/

Specialization Tracks
The Nationwide Children's Hospital predoctoral internship in professional psychology provides specialization in four tracks. Learn more about the following specialized tracks:

Learn More about Behavioral Health Services

Nationwide Children's Hospital
700 Children's Drive Columbus, Ohio 43205 614.722.2000