Competence…and Confidence!

Program graduates at lunch with Grand Rounds speaker Martin Franklin, PhD., Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Child and Adolescent OCD, Tic, Trich & Anxiety Group (COTTAGe).

In sum, our objectives focus on helping our interns to develop competence in a variety of assessment and therapy skills. As such, during their training, our interns receive intensive supervision on a wide range of assessment and treatment skills, in a number of different clinical settings, using a variety of treatment modalities. These include:

Assessment Skills

• Psychopathological Diagnosis
• Personality Assessment
• Neuropsychological Assessment
• Suicide/Violence Risk Assessment
• Educational/Learning Disability Testing
• Child Abuse Reporting

Treatment Skills

• Cognitive Behavior Therapy
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy
• Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
• Crisis Intervention
• Motivational Interviewing
• Family Systems
• Cognitive Remediation

Modalities

• Individual
• Family/Couples
• Group
• Multi-family Group
• Consultation/Liaison
• Parent Training

Thus, by the time they graduate, our interns are highly competent in their ability to manage all aspects of clinical care, from assessment and diagnosis to formulation and treatment to crisis management and risk assessment. In addition, they function with high competence in both inpatient and outpatient treatment settings, are comfortable dealing with suicidality, violence, psychosis, and drug addiction, and have a deeper understanding of psychopharmacological and medical issues and how to effectively share care with other disciplines.

As such, by the time they graduate, our interns report that they are highly confident that their skills will allow them to perform effectively in their next position; that they can work collaboratively with health care professionals from other disciplines and participate effectively on interprofessional health care teams; they will stay informed about advances in psychology; they will actively participate in professional organizations; and perhaps most importantly, that they have all the relevant background and knowledge to prepare them effectively for the state licensing examination.