The Clinical Psychology Internship Program at Loma Linda University School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry offers an integrated training that aims to do the following:

  1. Foster the development of a primary professional identity as a psychologist, which is congruent with LLU's commitment to "whole-person care," namely a bio-psycho-social-spiritual perspective in clinical care. Emphasis is placed on the scientific underpinnings of the practice of psychology, with special attention given to the biological, social, cultural, and spiritual factors present in clinical situations.
  2. Train entry-level generalist psychologists who have been exposed to various clinical contexts in which professional psychologists work. We believe a "generalist" should develop core competencies in clinical psychology, and aim to train interns to function competently in psychological assessment and diagnosis, psychological intervention, supervision, professional consultation, and program evaluation/development.
  3. Expand and extend basic assessment and intervention techniques to meet the needs of diverse settings and problems. In addition to developing "generalist" skills, the program provides the opportunity for each intern to gain some experience in a particular elective concentration.

Infused in all training experiences and rotations are elements of training and professional development which we consider foundational, including enhancing interns’ ability to make sound and scientifically informed professional judgments, to understand and apply professional laws and ethics in a variety of clinical contexts, deepening their appreciation of individual and cultural diversity and the impact of difference and diversity on people’s lives, and developing interpersonal and professional collaborations. We emphasize direct experience with patients at various stages of development, with a wide breadth of presentations and demographic characteristics, in varied contexts and service delivery systems (i.e., outpatient mental health, psychiatric inpatient, medical setting), and employing a variety of modalities or approaches, which we believe prepares interns to enter comfortably into a range of professional roles and settings. Our interns develop core competencies in the general areas of clinical psychology, including assessment and diagnosis, psychological intervention, supervision, professional consultation, and program evaluation/development. Each intern gains experience in a psychiatric setting (being assigned to one of the following units: eating disorders, adolescent partial hospitalization, adult partial hospitalization, adult inpatient, and geropsychology/neuropsychology), as well as in a medical setting focused on health psychology (in specialty settings such as psycho-cardiology, diabetes specialty clinic, women’s health, palliative care, smoking cessation). These experiences are meant to serve as a springboard for future professional and clinical development. These placements are assigned based on interns' prior experience and professional aspirations, and provide interns with the opportunity to begin to flexibly transfer and apply the foundational and general skills to working with a range of patients, and across a range of settings.

Program Structure

Full-Time Predoctoral Position
Training Period: September 1st- August 31st
* Please note, we require your attendance two weeks in advance to your start date for onboarding orientations/trainings.
Workdays: Monday - Friday
12-month internship and a minimum of 2,000 hours required for completion.

Training Components

Foundational Elements 

  1. Integration of science and practice
    • Goal: The development of scientifically minded professional psychology trainees who are competent in the selection of culturally sensitive evidence-based processes and interventions
  2. Ethical and legal issues
    • Goal: Adopt or adapt one’s own ethical decision-making model and apply it with personal integrity and contextual sensitivity
  3. Individual and cultural diversity
    • Goal: Expand current vision of the world and further develop one's ability to understand the perspective of others. Successful graduates demonstrate mature understanding of broad and general issues of diversity, including but not limited to, ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual diversity
  4. Emotional health and religion/spirituality
    • Goal: LLU has identified as its motto as "To Make Man [Humanity] Whole." As a religiously affiliated organization, it seeks to be congruent with its heritage by translating the ideal of “wholeness” into a bio-psycho-social-spiritually integrated approach to health care. The internship program seeks to assist the intern in the development of competencies in all areas of cultural diversity, and in addition, provide opportunities for more focused theoretical, scientific, and clinical explorations in the area of religion and spirituality as this may pertain to emotional health. The approach is “patient-centered,” in that neither the religion of the organization, nor the intern’s, has a central consideration; rather, the patient's worldview and religion are central. This approach is founded on cumulative and significant scientific evidence for the consideration of religion and spirituality as a factor in emotional health, both as a strength and as a source of distress

General Domains of Training

  1. Psychological assessment and diagnosis
    • Our program recognizes psychological assessment and diagnosis as a core professional activity of clinical psychologists. This training experience provides all interns with opportunities to enhance and hone their skills/competencies in the cognitive and personality assessment, risk assessment, and diagnosis of patients across a broad spectrum of clinical settings
  2. Psychological intervention
    • Psychological interventions are at the heart of the practicing clinical psychologist. Interns gain experience providing direct psychological services, including individual psychotherapy (in an outpatient mental health setting), group psychotherapy (typically on inpatient psychiatric units, as well as day-treatment programs), and crisis and behavioral health interventions (typically, in a medical care setting). Interns also provide indirect services, through consultation with other health professionals, treatment teams, and patients' family members or other community agencies, as needed.
  3. Professional consultation
    • Congruent with the profession of psychology’s efforts to establish itself as a health profession, interns actively participate in multidisciplinary contexts in health and mental health settings. Interns develop expertise in conveying psychological findings and principles to professionals from different disciplines. In addition, interprofessional education, training and scholarship prepares psychologists to work in a respectful collaborative, integrative, and informed manner within our field and with other disciplines and professions. Interns will gain experience providing professional consultation to individuals, groups, systems, and organizations that may have diverse values, ethical perspectives, worldviews, and may be accountable to different constituencies
  4. Supervision
    • Our program recognizes clinical supervision as a core professional activity of clinical psychologists. This general training experience provides all interns with a didactic foundation and then supervised practice of clinical supervision of practicum students
  5. Program development/evaluation
    • By adequately completing a program evaluation/development project, interns will demonstrate an intermediate to advanced level of professional psychological skill, abilities, proficiencies, competencies, and knowledge in the areas of theories and/or methods of evaluation. They will apply knowledge of research principles to clinical practices, and deepen their knowledge about various programs, interventions, and/or outcomes. In addition, they will learn to function independently as a “local clinical scientist."

Placements/Concentrations

  1. Eating disorders
    • This placement concentrates on the treatment and assessment of eating disorders, and provides interns with the opportunity to gain focused experience with a particular population (adolescent and adult patients being treated for Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa and their families) in a particular setting (partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs). The Eating Disorders placement emphasizes competencies in the assessment and treatment of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration. Particular emphasis is placed on utilizing empirically supported approaches, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Family-Based Treatment for Anorexia and Bulimia
  2. Adolescent assessment and intervention (with some access to child cases)
    • The Child and Adolescent Inpatient units at LLUBMC provide acute-care, intensive diagnostic evaluation and intervention programs to children and adolescents between the ages of 4 – 18 years. This placement provides the intern with the opportunity to gain focused experience working in an inpatient psychiatric setting, with children and adolescents with a wide range of diagnoses including mood disorders, psychoses, PTSD, developmental disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, and substance use disorders. Interns participate in a variety of assessment and intervention modalities, including comprehensive bio-psycho-social assessment and treatment, intensive family consultation, group therapy, and crisis intervention.
  3. Geropsychology/Neuropsychology
    • This placement concentrates on developing competency in the assessment and treatment of the elderly and other adults with neuropsychological issues.
  4. Clinics and Riverside University Health System (RUHS)
    • The intern at these clinic placement work with a team consisting of the attending physician, medical students, nurses, and dieticians to provide multi-disciplinary care. The intern's main role consists of consultation regarding mental health, self-care behaviors and motivation. In these clinics, interns screen for depression, anxiety, and substance use disorder. Although the medical diagnosis changes, and there may be population specific concerns, each clinic is selected to provide a comparable training experience in screening, consultation, and treatment for all interns. There are also opportunities to provide brief individual psychotherapy to patients.
      Clinics include:
    1. Diabetes Clinic: Screening for depression, anxiety and poor self-care behavior (exercise, diet and treatment follow-through). Common presentations in this clinic include: moderate to severe depression/anxiety, poor self-care behaviors, and psychosocial/financial hardship.
    2. Cardiology and Chronic Heart Failure: Screening for depression, anxiety and substance use disorders in a population struggling with heart problems. Main presentations include: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, chronic pain and fatigue, anger and psychosocial/financial hardship.
    3. Smoking Cessation: Screening for co-morbid mental health and brief behavioral intervention for smoking cessation.

  5. Rotation considered for expansion during the upcoming year include:

    • Continuity Care Clinic

    • Women's Health Clinic

    • Palliative Care

Evaluation and Successful Completion of Program

Evaluation Process

Prior to the start of their training year, interns are asked to complete a thorough self-assessment delineating their current knowledge and skills in the following areas:

  • Individual psychotherapy
  • Group psychotherapy
  • Psychological assessment and diagnosis
  • Case conceptualization
  • Treatment planning
  • Addressing issues of spirituality in clinical situations
  • Individual differences
  • Consultation
  • Supervision of trainees
  • Professional ethics and responsibilities
  • Research

As part of this self-assessment, interns are also asked to consider their clinical strengths, as well as describe areas of perceived weaknesses and desired growth; based on this information, various aspects of training may be adjusted, including intensity of supervision, review of unfamiliar assessment measures and methods, and review of clinical populations with which the intern has limited or no experience.

The Training Committee meets on a monthly basis to discuss interns’ growth, strengths, and weaknesses for an ongoing, informal evaluation of the interns. Interns are formally evaluated by the Training Director and their individual supervisors on a quarterly basis. Formal, written feedback is provided to interns in the form of a completed Psychology Intern Competency Assessment Form.

The Psychology Intern Competency Assessment Form examines the interns’ competency and progress in the following areas:

  • Professional conduct, ethics and legal matters
  • Individual and cultural diversity
  • Theories and methods of psychological diagnosis and assessment
  • Theories and methods of effective psychotherapeutic intervention
  • Scholarly inquiry and application of current scientific knowledge to practice
  • Professional consultation
  • Supervision
  • Identification and potential utilization, if appropriate, of spiritual resources

The Clinical Psychology Internship program continually assesses each intern's performance and conduct. At the completion of each quarter, supervisors provide written evaluations and meet with the interns to discuss the assessments and offer recommendations. When differences between interns' and supervisors' appraisals surface in these meetings, it is expected that in most cases they will be resolved between supervisor and supervisee. After meeting, the supervisor and intern sign the written evaluation and forward it to the Training Director. The Training Director obtains additional evaluation data through consultation with supervisors and talks with other professional staff who have significant contact with interns.

Members of the Training Committee review the evaluation data. The Committee is chaired by the Training Director who consults with each of the members. Based on the evaluations and on input from the trainee, the Training Director may modify the intern’s clinical experiences to better meet the interns' training nee

Performance Feedback

 

A variety of means are utilized to assess interns' progress. The most frequent method of assessment is through direct observation and supervision, as well as the review of case notes and assessment reports. Interns are also observed during case presentations to judge the quality and clarity of their case conceptualization and treatment plan. In addition, the intern functions as part of a multidisciplinary team, and feedback from team members may be solicited.

Feedback to the intern is provided through various means. The most common comes through direct feedback from the supervisor after direct observation or supervisory discussion. Besides being the most frequent, we believe this is the most important feedback that the intern receives. More formal feedback occurs at the end of each quarter, based on the Psychology Intern Competency Assessment form. Given the frequency of observational feedback and supervision, it is our goal that the formal feedback sessions do not contain any "surprises" for the intern. During quarterly evaluation feedback sessions, recommendations are made by the primary supervisor and training team and conveyed to the intern. In addition, the intern is expected to provide feedback regarding their experience and progress through internship, and quality of supervision provided. There are quarterly meetings in which the Training Director, supervisors and interns participate, and discussion is focused on the exchange of constructive feedback between faculty and trainees, particularly as it relates to interns training experience.

Requirements for Completion

  1. Internship requirements include completion of one calendar year (12 months/52 weeks/260 days) and 2000 SPE hrs.
    1. A Leave of Absence may be requested in special circumstances (extended illness, FMLA); however, anything that is in addition to the 15 Personal Days will be added to the end of the internship period, so that all interns complete the exact same requirements (including time requirements). Interns must have documented a minimum of 2000 hours of activity over the course of the year on their monthly activity logs. The internship requires one year of full-time training to be completed in no less than 12 months. Paid federal holidays are included, and interns accumulate some paid annual leave that can be taken during the year

  2. To successfully complete the internship, interns must demonstrate competency in all core areas identified on the Intern Competency Evaluation Form. Competency standards require that interns receive an average rating of 3 ("Intermediate") or above on each of the eight program goals, and no individual objectives rated 1 ("Needs remedial work") on all evaluations completed mid-year or later. Ratings range from 1 to 5. For end-of-year evaluations, successful interns are expected to receive an average rating of 4 ("High Intermediate") or above on at lease seven of the eight goals, and no individual objectives rated 2 ("Entry level") or below. Interns must also complete a minimum of 2000 training hours, successfully present a final Case Conceptualization Presentation, and an Assessment Case Conference.

    1. If an intern’s performance falls below competency standards, Due Process Procedures are followed. The trainee needs to meet competency standards by the conclusion of their training.