Internship in Professional Psychology

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, 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.

The Behavioral Health service line has experienced significant growth in the past several years with the addition of more clinical staff, research faculty and psychiatric emergency care. In March 2020, Nationwide Children’s opened a free standing Behavioral Health Pavilion focused solely on children with adolescents with behavioral health concerns. It is the most comprehensive facility of its kind nationally and is representative of Nationwide Children’s commitment to behavioral health treatment, training and research.

Internship Handbook

Our internship handbook contains information about general policies/procedures as well as clinical experiences, benefits, information about supervision and support for trainees, and evaluation opportunities/procedures. Please note that the internship handbook is updated annually and reflects information for the current training year.

2023-2024 Internship Handbook

Training Philosophy

The program’s training philosophy 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 to engage in evidence-based practice and to develop and demonstrate competency with regard to professional skills, ethical decision-making, and an understanding of how diversity factors impact this practice. Interns receive formal education about empirically supported treatments, observe them in practice, and apply empirically supported treatments to individual cases.

Training in our internship assumes interns have had exposure to and will gain additional experience with the major areas of assessment, intervention, consultation, and advocacy in professional psychology. 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 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. Provision of this knowledge and skill base is undertaken in the context of modeling, mentoring, teaching, and supervision.

Pursuant with the APA SoA code, the internship program has a specific aim for its interns. The overall aim of the internship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is to prepare interns for either a post-doctoral or early career position as a psychologist working with children and families. The intern will behave ethically at all times, appreciate diversity in their work, and be proficient in providing evidence-based care for children and families.

As noted above, our internship is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). We abide by the APA “Standards of Accreditation in Health Service Psychology” (SoA) and follow their competency areas. Thus, interns are trained and assessed in the following competency areas:

• Research
• Ethical and legal standards
• Individual and cultural diversity
• Professional values, attitudes and behaviors
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Assessment
• Intervention
• Supervision
• Consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills

These are the profession-wide competencies that transcend theoretical orientations, are essential to all activities of professional psychologists and are directly related to the quality of psychological services. We believe that individuals can be educated and trained to develop these competencies and these competencies can be assessed. Therefore, trainee growth and development is assessed on these domains.

Faculty in all six tracks have a strong commitment to the multi-disciplinary approach to treatment and offer interns opportunities to work with a variety of mental health, medical, and allied therapy colleagues. The internship faculty have diverse theoretical orientations, and espouse behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, developmental and systemic approaches.

Didactic Seminars

Interns from all six tracks take part in didactic seminars. As a group, all 16 interns meet weekly for internship seminar. Topics are selected to be appropriate for interns in all six tracks and cover a broad variety of issues with regard to assessment, treatment, ethics, professionalism and multi-cultural issues. In addition, separate tracks have their own seminars focused on that track’s specialty area.

The Nationwide Children's Hospital internship in professional psychology provides six tracks of emphasis. Below are links to learn more about each track:

• Pediatric Psychology Track – 4 Slots

• Clinical Child Track – 3 Slots

• Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) Track – 4 Slots

• Neuropsychology Track – 1 Slot

• Autism Treatment Track (ATT) – 2 Slots

• Pediatric Acute Treatment Track – 2 Slots

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 several different theoretical orientations.

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 clinical 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

Our training program emphasizes an evidence-based approach to clinical practice. 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 during the training year, interns are making adequate progress toward defense of their dissertation.

Evaluation is an ongoing process and all supervisors and interns are encouraged to share feedback with each other throughout the year. An informal evaluation is completed at the two-month mark. Formal evaluations of interns are completed three times a year at four, eight and twelve 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 to the intern, the intern’s track director, and the internship training committee.

Interns also provide regular feedback to training staff. Interns complete program evaluations at six and twelve months during the year. This feedback helps training staff address current issues, as well as make necessary changes for subsequent training classes.

Diversity is an important part of Nationwide Children's Hospital’s vision and, as an organization, we strive to have our staff be reflective of the communities we serve. At Nationwide Children's, diversity is defined more broadly than the traditional definition of race and/or nationality and includes race, ethnicity, age, gender, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, family structure, sexual orientation and physical ability. Across the hospital you will see multiple initiatives in line with this value:

• The hospital has ongoing efforts in their initiative, Stand Against Racism, Stand for Health Equity, led by the hospital's CEO and a diversity steering committee.
• The hospital also has Employee Resource Groups (ERG’s), which are teams of employees with common backgrounds, goals and interests, formed to act as a cultural resource for both group members and the entire organization.
• Behavioral Health has its own Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee that has members across Behavioral Health.
• Different departments involved in the internship have their own DEI committees that invite direct participation from interns.
• Our internship has an Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion who is responsible for continuing to develop internship efforts to recruit, support, and retain diverse interns and Psychologists as well as support development of DEI didactics, curriculum and training experiences.
• Our first few weekly intern seminars focus on many of the cultural groups or issues seen at Nationwide Children’s to help interns quickly acclimate and increase competence in these areas.
• Ongoing weekly intern seminars weave considerations for different cultural aspects into the topic being presented.
• We welcome international students and have had successful international interns in the past.

Learn More

• An annual stipend of $39,520
• 15 days of paid leave for vacation and sick time, 6 holidays
• Up to five days of professional leave for job interviews and home university-related activities
• An allotment for reimbursement of professional expenses ($1000)
• Employee healthcare benefits may be purchased through Nationwide Children's Hospital
• Faculty appointment at The Ohio State University

The Nationwide Children’s Hospital internship in professional psychology is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association Commission on Accreditation. The program is fully accredited through 2031. You may contact the APA Commission on Accreditation at:

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

For more information about any of the tracks listed, we recommend that you contact the Associate Director that oversees that particular track. The email addresses are as follows:

• Kelly Wesolowski, PsyD, Director of Internship Training
• Nicole Dempster, PhD, Associate Director, Pediatric Psychology Track
• Molly Meers, PhD, Associate Director, Clinical Child Track
• Shalonda Brooks, PhD, Associate Director, IDD Track
• Andrea Coppens, PhD, Associate Director, Neuropsychology Track
• Anya Froelich, PsyD, BCBA-D, COBA and Ashley Showalter, PhD, BCBA-D, COBA, Co-Associate Directors, Autism Treatment Track
• Catherine Butz, PhD, Associate Director, Pediatric Acute Treatment Track