About the Medical College of Wisconsin Health Psychology Residency Program

The psychology resident is conceptualized as an emerging health (adult or pediatric) psychologist who will be working under the supervision of a faculty psychologist as an integral member of the medical team, analogous to a medical resident. Over the course of the internship year, experiences will increase in responsibility and the psychology resident will work more independently. Health psychology residents must demonstrate competence for entry-level psychology practice across the profession-wide competencies: research, ethical and legal standards, individual and cultural diversity, professional values, attitudes, and behaviors, communication and interpersonal skills, assessment, intervention, supervision, and consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills. The program is experiential in nature, but includes a Scholarly Project, which is a domain-specific, clinically based research project, program development project, or research-based presentation. This project seeks to ensure that residents have the ability to train broadly as health and pediatric psychologists, addressing clinical questions and concerns with empirical methods congruent with the scientist-practitioner model.

Clinical supervision will be the core training modality used, with the residents having the opportunity to directly observe and receive feedback from experienced health and pediatric psychologists, engage in direct one-on-one teaching that is bi-directional and conversational in nature, and receive direct feedback about written and psychotherapeutic work from an experienced practicing academic health psychologist. Residents will have training on providing supervision through didactic seminar training on supervision and acting as a clinical supervisor to an advanced practicum student in the Behavioral Medicine and Primary Care Psychology (adult track) and Pediatric Behavioral Medicine and Primary Care Psychology (pediatric track) clinics.

In line with the philosophy of training scientist-practitioner health and pediatric psychologists, residents will also integrate academic research into clinical practice, through use of empirically validated treatment modalities, integration of psychological science into clinical practice, and engagement in clinically-based research and process improvement. Cultural diversity, broadly defined, is also a core philosophical pillar and goal of the health psychology residency. Understanding a patient from his/her/their cultural background and context is essential. Multicultural awareness will be further developed and honed through assessment, case conceptualization and tailoring of health psychology interventions. Multicultural competence is important given the diversity of our Milwaukee patient population along multiple rays of diversity (e.g., racial/ethnic background, SES, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, rurality, etc).

In addition to experiential training in assessment, intervention, and supervision, residents will engage in several didactic courses. All residents will participate in the Combined Health Psychology Didactic Series (meets weekly for two hours), the Wellness Brown Bag Lunch (meets monthly for one hour), and the Interactive Ethics Case Conference (meets monthly for one hour). The Adult Track Residents attend the Track Specific Adult Didactic Series (meets two times per month for one hour), while the Pediatric Track Residents attend the Track Specific Pediatric Series (meets two times per month for one hour). Residents will have opportunities for cross-professional training with other health discipline trainees through seminars and Grand Rounds offered at MCW, Froedtert Hospital, and Children’s Wisconsin.

Aims

Aim 1. The Health Psychology Residency (Internship) program aims to train entry level health service psychologists who will be well prepared to pursue a health psychology (adult or pediatric) postdoctoral researcher and eventually a career in a hospital, healthcare setting, or academic medical center.

Aim 2. The Health Psychology Residency (Internship) program aims to train entry level psychologists in a scientist-practitioner model, with intent to produce health psychologists who integrate science into practice across roles as a psychologist.

Aim 3. The Health Psychology Residency (Internship) program aims to train entry level psychologists to be integral members of a multidisciplinary health care team.