Pediatric Psychology Track

APPIC Program Match Number: 150912

Number of Internship Positions: 4

Inpatient Consultation/Liaison

A central clinical experience for all Pediatric Psychology Track interns is the consultation/liaison service. Inpatient consultations reflect the diversity of the Nationwide Children's Hospital’s general pediatric service and are received from various medical specialties, for example: Burn/Surgery, Hematology/Oncology, Pulmonary, Orthopedics, Hospital Pediatrics, Nephrology, NICU, PICU, and Endocrinology. As one of the largest consultation services in the hospital, the Department of Psychology completes more than 2,000 inpatient consultations per year. Inpatient consultation often involves collaboration with different disciplines including social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, child life, psychiatry, and palliative care.

Faculty members distribute consults so that over the course of the year, interns are exposed to patients of different ages and presenting problems. Continuity experiences are offered so interns can follow patients throughout their entire training year (i.e., hematology/oncology). Interns manage approximately 100-150 inpatient medical consultations during the course of the year and have opportunities to be involved with several multidisciplinary teams.

All interns will be involved with the oncology team for 12 months. Each intern also will complete a 12-month experience with another long-term service. Examples of services include pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), sickle cell disease, or hospital pediatrics. To round out training, interns will also have 3 mini-rotations (~4 months long) involving lower volume services which may include orthopedics, burn/surgery, nephrology, sickle cell disease, and endocrinology.

Inpatient consultation therapeutic services span the gamut and may involve pain management strategies, diagnostic assessments, behavioral interventions to improve disease self-management, patient and family adjustment to a medical diagnosis, mood concerns, and end of life.

Outpatient Therapy

Interns maintain an outpatient treatment caseload of approximately 9-12 outpatients.

Interns maintain treatment of 2 outpatients within our biofeedback, feeding, and type 1 diabetes programs. Our biofeedback program includes training seminars and utilizes multiple biofeedback modalities. Our outpatient feeding therapy program utilizes evidence-based behavioral strategies to work on quickly increasing volume and variety of foods and decreasing use of supplemental formulas or tube feedings. Additionally, interns will be involved in treating children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes with focus on increasing adjustment and adherence to treatment regimen.

Trainees will round out their caseload with additional outpatients that meet their training goals (different presenting problems, psychosocial factors, medical subspecialties). Referrals are varied and include children and adolescents with difficulties secondary to chronic illness, chronic pain, functional disorders, behavioral problems, adherence issues and family difficulties.

Throughout the year interns will also receive specialized training in pill swallowing and needle phobia and see 2 cases with this presenting problem.

Interdisciplinary Clinic

Interns will also complete 2 clinic rotations in 6-month increments, typically a ½ day twice per month. Clinic availability has included primary care, burn/surgery, feeding, and craniofacial clinics. These experiences show the wide breadth of psychology involvement in interdisciplinary teams (full assessments, brief intervention).

Psychological Assessment

Pediatric Psychology Track interns complete a year-long assessment experience that will involve the completion of 5 to 8 cases. Some of these cases will involve full battery of testing and some may require more communication/collaboration surrounding existing test data. Interns will also present one assessment case in the Nuts and Bolts group and give the other interns an opportunity to practice peer supervision. Psychoeducational evaluations have referral questions which typically include school placement, developmental delays, ADHD, learning disabilities, behavioral or mood concerns, and the effects of chronic illness on cognitive and emotional functioning.

All psychological assessment experiences are supervised by our pediatric psychologists.

Supervision

Interns receive both individual and group supervision from pediatric psychology faculty members specific to their activities. Outpatient bi-monthly group supervisions include biofeedback, feeding, and diabetes. Individual supervision for consult services is both structured/scheduled and on-the-fly.

Didactics

Didactic experiences in the Pediatric Psychology track are both formal and informal. The intern will be expected to complete readings in pediatric psychology, especially as they pertain to specific pediatric populations.

In addition to internship-wide formal didactic activities, interns in Pediatric Psychology attend two specialized training courses.

1. Pediatric Psychology Seminars which are designed to introduce and review current research, clinical, professional development, and ethical topics in pediatric psychology (e.g., medical traumatic stress, adherence, pill swallowing).
2. Clinical Service Hour is a seminar series presented by medical physicians and nurse practitioners on the etiology, treatment, and psychosocial impact of a wide range of pediatric health conditions (e.g., oncology, diabetes, asthma).

Pediatric Psychology interns also have opportunity to participate in regularly scheduled meetings with various multi-disciplinary teams within the hospital. These may include but are not limited to PICU rounds, Oncology Psychosocial Rounds, NICU rounds, and Sickle Cell Disease Team Meeting.

Many additional educational opportunities exist within our hospital setting including Medical Grand Rounds, Tumor Board, Clinical Research Seminars, Schwartz Center rounds, and the Multicultural Brown Bag Lunch Series.

Hours

Pediatric psychology interns work five days per week, although rotating responsibility for coverage of weekend and holiday consultations is necessary (approximately one weekend every 5 weeks). Hours worked per week vary, but are generally 40-50, depending on case load, special interests, and consultation coverage.

Pediatric Psychology/Neuropsychology Track Faculty

Even though faculty are listed below in categories, it should be noted that all faculty take part in each intern’s training to different degrees, including clinical supervision, mentoring, and/or didactic training.