Curriculum

The clinical psychology internship is a full-time (40 hour a week) commitment for a year (12 months).

Psychiatric Inpatients: Interns will rotate through adult and adolescent inpatient psychiatric units. Psychiatric inpatient rotations involve psychological assessments as requested, group therapy, developing behavior plans and individual therapy. Interns work as members of multidisciplinary teams providing services in psychiatric inpatient units.

Outpatient Psychotherapy: Interns will have a caseload of outpatient adult psychotherapy cases. Most will be appropriate for cognitive behavioral therapy.

In addition, assessments of outpatients will be conducted at the Psychiatric Services Center or the Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) as requested by psychiatric residents and faculty. Assessment batteries will include interviews and selected psychological testing.

Substance Abuse: The interns will be integrated into the coordinated inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment program being piloted at OLOL.

Collaborative Care: The collaborative care rotation will consist of working in collaboration with primary care physicians from the LSU Internal Medicine Residency. The residency is located on the OLOL campus at the O’Donovan Clinic. Interns will work closely with IM residents, IM faculty and psychiatric staff as the behavioral science experts of a multidisciplinary collaborative care team.

Consultation/Liaison: Interns will have the opportunity to work with medical inpatients as consultants for hospital based physicians. Interns will work in concert with the Psychiatry Residency Consultation/Liaison Service. Upon referral, an intern will conduct an assessment of a medical inpatient with the goals of answering the referral question and making recommendations to the referring physician. Following patients during their inpatient stay and brief bed-side interventions may be conducted when appropriate.

The interns are integrated into the suicide prevention program at OLOL which uses the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) model. At OLOL CAMS starts as part of the Consultation/Liaison service and is continued in the outpatient realm where appropriate. Interns will be trained on CAMS.

Didactics: Interns will attend a variety of didactic opportunities. There will be a variety of presentations by a variety of lecturers from differing disciplines. Topics will include legal and ethical issues in psychological practice, assessment and management of suicidality and homicidality, emergency commitment criteria and procedures, mandated reporting of abuse; documentation and notes.

Weekly Grand Rounds will be held jointly with Psychiatry. Local and national experts present on a variety of topics in mental health over the year.