Clinical Internship in Developmental Disabilities and Pediatric Psychology

Core Competencies Emphasized

The CDRC Division of Psychology focuses on developing several overarching competencies/skill sets during the internship training year. We strive to ensure that interns move toward independence in the following areas by the end of their internship year:

Professional Behavior in a Multi-/ Interdisciplinary, Hospital Setting

Our training program emphasizes development of skills that are critical to being a psychologist in a hospital setting while providing interdisciplinary and/or multidisciplinary care. We strive to ensure that trainees are well prepared to step in to the role of a psychologist in such a setting, with an emphasis on the ability to function as an equal in a medical setting while offering a unique set of skills to the medical team. To that end, our training program focuses on skills development in the areas of functioning as a multi-specialty team member, group functioning, and consultation skills with other health care providers, all with in a hospital setting.

Care for Complex Children, Adolescents, and Families

The mission of the CDRC clinical care programs is to provide state-of-the-art services for children with special health care needs. As such, we serve a patient population that is complex in it’s

1. diversity of presenting issues;
2. interplay between medical, developmental, and psychosocial presentation; and
3. level of support and services needed.

Interns receive training focused on conceptualization to guide assessment and intervention with complex cases, family-centered care, evaluation and care for complex cases, and the management of difficult behavior in evaluation and intervention contexts.

Professional Development

Faculty members of the Division of Psychology at the CDRC strive to ensure that trainees experience professional growth toward independence through the course of their internship experience. We recognize that to be an effective, competent psychologist, one must receive training experiences in a broad array of areas, including those that go beyond direct interactions with patients and their families. Therefore, we focus training on skill sets related to ethical behavior and thinking, critical thinking skills, written and oral expression of ideas and findings to diverse audiences (e.g., families, other health care providers), forward thinking/creative development (e.g., programmatic development), and work-life balance.

Scholarship

Scholarship is a critical component of the identity of a psychologist, whether one is a consumer or producer of scholarly activity. The core faculty within the Division of the CDRC is actively involved in various aspects of scholarly activity, ranging from directing independent research, to collaborating on/supporting research, to consuming psychological research to guide practice. We fuse training on scholarship into internship experience, including a requirement of involvement in research by trainees, opportunities to lead critical analyses of current research, presenting research findings, and so forth. Emphasis is on integrating attention to empirical data and the scientific method into one’s identity as a psychologist.

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