Pediatric Psychology Track

APPIC Program Match Number: 150912

Number of Internship Positions: 4

Inpatient Consultation/Liaison

A central clinical experience for 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: Hematology/Oncology, Pulmonary, Hospital Pediatrics (our general medicine service), 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, speech 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 year and have opportunities to be involved with several multidisciplinary teams including psychosocial rounds and care conferences.

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 have included, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), sickle cell disease, and pediatric intensive care unit. To round out training, interns will also have specialized inpatient experiences (~4-6 months long) focused on more rapid case conceptualization and management which may include hospital pediatrics, adolescent medicine and endocrinology.

Inpatient consultation services may target 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 support.

Outpatient Therapy

Interns maintain an outpatient treatment caseload of approximately 8-12 outpatients.

Interns maintain treatment of outpatients within our pain/biofeedback, feeding, and diabetes programs. Our pain/biofeedback program includes training seminars on biofeedback assisted relaxation strategies, with common referrals from neurology and rheumatology. Our outpatient feeding therapy program utilizes evidence-based behavioral strategies to work on 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 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. Exposure to pill swallowing will also round out training experience.

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, preventative cardiology, hypermobility 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 will engage in assessment experiences that address school placement, developmental delays, ADHD, learning disabilities behavioral or mood concerns, and the effects of chronic illness on cognitive and emotional functioning.

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 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 Behavioral Health Grand Rounds.

Hours

Pediatric psychology interns work five days per week. 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.