Psychology Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Health Service Psychology – Clinical

Our program embraces the practitioner-scholar model by requiring supervised clinical work, research/scholarly activity, and opportunities to serve as an educator. All three of these endeavors are deemed essential to incorporating the theory-research-practice triad into a career as a clinical psychologist.

Accordingly, our programs strive to enable fellows to:

• Utilize accurate psychological assessment processes
• Develop effective psychotherapy interventions (individuals, couples, and groups)
• Perform consultation and outreach services
• Demonstrate a commitment to ethical practice of psychology
• Incorporate supervision as a mode of peer consultation
• Teach psychological knowledge to professionals and lay persons
• Respect multi-cultural differences
• Deploy research/scholarly skills to study empirical questions
• Progress toward professional licensure

Fellows follow a carefully planned weekly training curriculum:

• Two hours of individual supervision
• Two to three hours of formal seminars
• Twelve to 16 hours of clinical work in an outpatient mental health clinic
• Eight to 16 hours in associated clinical settings, depending on training track
• Four hours of research/scholarship time

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Our program offers two training tracks:

• End-of-life care, grief and bereavement
• Consultation/liaison health psychology

Fellows receive training specific to their specialty track as well as exposure to didactic material pertinent to the alternate tracks in order to broaden their educational experience.

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End-of-life care, grief and bereavement

This track is designed to train future psychologists in the relatively under-represented subspecialty of dying, death and bereavement – also called thanatology, the study of death and psychological mechanisms for coping with death.

Fellows receive a minimum of two hours per week of individual supervision and 2-3 hours per week of formal seminars that concentrate on theoretical and research-based information in six major areas:

• Dying
• End-of-life decision making
• Bereavement assessment/intervention
• Traumatic death/death education

These educational objectives closely follow recommendations codified by the Association for Death Education and Counseling, an international and interdisciplinary professional organization devoted to promoting excellence in the care of the dying and the bereaved.

Fellows in this track work closely with the Supportive Palliative Care Team as well as Hospice, which exposes them to the full clinical spectrum of approaching death, end of life issues, acute grief at the time of death, immediate aftermath, and more extended bereavement trajectory.

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Consultation/liaison health psychology

This track is designed to prepare psychologists to work in a variety of health-related settings: hospitals, clinics, private psychology practice with medical specialization, and academic psychology departments.

Consultation/Liaison Health psychology provides a broad array of experiences with fellows working in both inpatient and outpatient settings to treat medical and psychiatric patients with acute and chronic needs. Patients range from mature adolescents to adults to the elderly, as well as families.

Fellows receive in-depth training opportunities encompassing assessment, psychodiagnostic evaluations, evidenced-based clinical interventions, consultation with other medical services/teams (e.g., neurology, oncology, pain center, obstetrics-gynecology, weight-reduction surgery, and transplant), and research/scholarly activity.

Individual supervision of clinical experience

Initially, fellows have the opportunity to observe licensed psychology supervisors conduct psychological assessment, treatment, couple/family therapy, and group therapy in order to familiarize themselves with and acclimate to the practice environment at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Temple. In addition, fellows receive individualized instruction in organizational standards, protocol, and the electronic medical record system. Generally, this orientation process takes one to two weeks to complete.

Once fellows begin regular office hours of practice, they can expect to spend approximately 18-24 hours per week in direct patient care both at the mental health center and in associated clinical settings (approximately 65% of total time). Regular individual supervision (two hours per week) provides the necessary guidance and mentoring to allow fellows to function with "semi-autonomy" in implementing assessment procedures and designing/executing effective treatment strategies/techniques.

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End of life track

* Fourth Monday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.: Psychology Case Conference

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Consultation liaison track

*Fourth Monday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.: Psychology Case Conference

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Primary care track

*Fourth Monday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.; Psychology Case Conference

Supervised clinical experience is enhanced by a curriculum of didactic seminars. Our program provides fellows with 2-3 hours per week of formal seminars. The required seminar time will include the Didactic Seminar Series and the Professional Development Seminar Series.

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Didactic seminar series

• Theory of grief and bereavement: 24 weeks
• Health psychology: 24 weeks
• Couples and family therapy: 12 weeks
• Integrated primary care
• Psychology: 10 weeks

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Professional development seminar series

• Baylor Scott & White Health orientation: 4 weeks (two hours per week)
• Professional development and ethics: 4 weeks
• Psychoactive medicine for non-prescribers: 8 weeks
• Diversity in healthcare: 12 weeks
• Teaching and supervision: 8 weeks (four weeks training and four weeks teaching)
• Career in professional psychology: 4 weeks

In addition, fellows have access to regularly-scheduled Grand Rounds sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science as well as by other clinical departments in order to enhance their professional knowledge.

Our program dedicates approximately 10% of fellows’ time to pursue research and scholarly activities. Fellows are expected to complete a research endeavor or scholarly project of reasonable scope and design during the course of their training year, including preparation of a manuscript for submission to a professional periodical.

The results of investigation may become the topic of a Grand Rounds presentation toward the end of the training year. Additionally, presentations may be made at a professional meeting, such as annual state conference or national professional association.

Baylor Scott & White Health Division of Research and Education encourages staff research initiatives and provides in-house support with research design, biostatistics, and research coordinators. Specifically, there are mentorship grants available to support trainee research initiatives when paired with an appropriate faculty mentor.