The program offers a one-year, full-time training experience. Interns are expected to engage in 750 hours of direct service during the internship year. This translates into approximately 15 or 16 hours of direct service delivery per week. This expectation is the result of the program's goal of providing sufficient exposure and experience to meet the program's competency expectations while also allowing adequate time for supervision, seminars, record keeping, and literature reviews within a 40-hour week. While interns are expected to contribute to patient care, the intern's service provision is secondary to the training received by the intern.
Supervision
When interns begin the training year with the Psychology Internship Program, each intern is assigned a professional development supervisor who is responsible for integrating the intern into the program and refining the intern's schedule so that training goals and objectives can be met. Professional development supervisors are responsible for the on-going evaluation of the match between the intern's training goals and objectives and their responsibilities within the program. They also help to guide the intern through the identification of fellowship opportunities consistent with their career goals in collaboration with the intern's graduate program as needed. The program also designates up to four clinical supervisors for the supervision of the psychotherapy and testing activities. All clinical supervisors are licensed psychologists.
Interns receive approximately four hours of individual supervision per week. Intensive supervision is a strength of the internship experience at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC). Supervision is intended to expose interns to a variety of clinical approaches and help the interns to develop and understand their treatment philosophy and style. The program aims to help trainees become thoughtful and knowledgeable about the evolution of their own professional identity and to fully conceptualize their clinical decisions. Supervision offers opportunities for socialization into the profession of psychology and may utilize a wide variety of teaching techniques such as process notes, review of written work, discussion, live or recorded observation, co-therapy, didactic exposure, and mentoring.
Supervisors are highly accessible to the interns and seek to provide the interns with sufficient training, mentoring, and encouragement to allow them to successfully complete the internship. Supervisors help interns to utilize empirical findings and relevant theoretical models as the bases for their thinking about clinical issues.
Didactics
Seminar series provide another critical component of the program's efforts to expose interns to the core skills of the profession of psychology. These seminars are held on a weekly basis. The following seminars are offered:
- The Research Lecture Series is held over four sessions in August and aims to introduce trainees, second-year psychiatry residents, and doctoral psychology interns to the process and outcomes of research in an academic medical center Department of Psychiatry as well as introduce projects active in the department.
- Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds is held each Tuesday from September to June. Grand Rounds consists of a formal presentation by a visiting speaker or faculty member on a wide variety of topics in the field.
- The Clinical Practice Didactic is held weekly on Fridays. This didactic series is attended by the Adult Psychology and Child and Pediatric Psychology track interns throughout the year. This seminar provides in-depth information about a variety of topics and techniques, including methods of assessment and intervention, relevant to professional clinical application of psychological science. Topics are presented during individual didactic presentations in a seminar style by faculty from the Department of Psychiatry and other clinical departments as available.
- The Neuropsychology Seminar is held weekly on Fridays and is designed to further the Neuropsychology trainees’ empirical knowledge base in human clinical neuroscience, build clinical skills, and facilitate progress towards board certification in clinical neuropsychology. This is achieved through didactic presentations, case presentations, and fact-finding sessions. This seminar is attended by the Adult Neuropsychology and Pediatric Neuropsychology track interns.
- The Professional Development Seminar is held monthly on Fridays. This seminar involves faculty presentations on topics in ethics; risk assessment; cultural diversity; career preparation and job attainment; evidence-based practice standards and the conduct of clinical supervision, among other topics.
- Additional didactic/observational experiences are available. All interns are invited to attend the psychiatry resident journal club. Adult interns attend a monthly psychotherapy case conference and psychology journal club as well as a weekly Hanover Psychiatry team meeting. Neuropsychology track interns have the opportunity to observe Wada administrations. They also attend the Epilepsy Case Conference on Fridays from 3:00 to 4:30 pm in the Radiology conference room at DHMC, and the Neurology Grand Rounds held on Fridays. Child and Pediatric Psychology interns attend additional didactics focused on interventions across the lifespan. See more Grand Rounds offerings.
In addition to the educational benefits of the seminars, the seminar series helps to create cohesion in the intern class, and it serves to consolidate the interns' identities as psychologists.
Program goals
The Department of Psychiatry's Psychology Internship Program seeks to provide high quality clinical training and research exposure to doctoral level psychologists. The Program, consistent with the scientist-practitioner model, is designed to help early-career professionals develop solid skills in both clinical practice and research. The internship experience at DHMC is primarily geared toward enhancing interns' clinical knowledge and skill, but, throughout the year, the internship program exposes its trainees to the conduct and use of research in the field and emphasizes the importance of research in clinical decision-making. The Department of Psychiatry is a research rich environment in which interns are able to work with professionals with international reputations in research areas such as neuroscience, post-traumatic stress disorder, implementation science, and serious and persistent mental illness. Research opportunities are available for interns wishing to gain additional supervised research experience.
The Psychology Internship Program is designed to involve interns in a specified range of core professional experiences. We strive to equip all of our doctoral psychology interns with basic knowledge and skills in treatment models and interventions, assessment, sensitivity to and understanding of cultural differences, ethics and professional conduct, and research skills. Interns are expected to be able to draw from the research literature to support their clinical actions, and they are expected to see ways in which service delivery issues may identify empirical questions that may be used for subsequent research ventures.
An additional goal of the Internship Program is to provide focused training in a domain or "track" which the intern specifies as his/her future area of professional specialization. At this time, the program provides focused training in Neuropsychology and Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on treatment and assessment of Adults or Children. There are positions available in the Adult Neuropsychology track, Adult Psychology track, Child and Pediatric Psychology track, and Pediatric Neuropsychology track for the 2024-2025 training year.
Intern evaluation process
The Dartmouth Psychology Internship Program provides nearly continuous evaluation and feedback to the interns. Specific competencies in treatment interventions, assessment, sensitivity and understanding of cultural differences, ethics and professional conduct, and how science and practice interrelate are assessed through on-going weekly supervision and seminar participation. Intern performance is formally assessed every four months in October, February, and June. Strengths and weaknesses in intern performance are identified and any remedial plans are developed to address areas needing improvement. Interns are expected to participate in evaluations of the program by completing seminar, supervisor, and program evaluations.
Diversity and inclusion
The DHMC Psychology Internship Program supports a diverse and inclusive training environment. We encourage applicants from all racial, ethnic, religious, sexual and gender minorities to consider our program.
The DHMC setting in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont offers numerous opportunities to experience the cultural diversity of our region through its association with Dartmouth College. The following resources provide information about some of the opportunities that exist to engage with diverse communities:
- Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in Dartmouth Graduate Medical Education
- Dartmouth College Standing at The Threshold celebration in honor of MLK Day
- Dartmouth College student religious groups
Interns also have access to several Employee Resource Networks (ERNs) through their staff categorization at DHMC. For more information about ERNs, please visit the Employee Resource Networks (ERN) page.
Psychiatry DEIB Committee
The Department of Psychiatry’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEIB) Committee is open to any faculty, staff, and trainees in the department. All are welcome and encouraged to participate by attending meetings or engaging with email communications and contributing in other ways.
The goals of the committee include:
- being vocal and responsible advocates for diversity and inclusion
- facilitating thoughtful exchanges about DEI, including discussions with folks outside of the Department of Psychiatry who are doing related work
- identifying and recommending best practices for areas that include, but are not limited to: training curricula, faculty/staff hiring and retention
- advocating for inclusive policies on the departmental, institutional, local, and state level providing a forum for discussing DEI-related resources (articles, books, videos, podcasts, etc.)
- identifying goals and areas for future work.
Projects initiated by the DEIB Committee include:
- addressing concerns related to LGBTQIA+ messaging at the hospital through direct communication with Human Resources
- communicating with department members and engaging in follow-up after local and national hate crimes
- curating departmental art displays to represent the vibrant, caring, and diverse community of the Department of Psychiatry
- developing a resource related to the diversity in the Upper Valley to benefit faculty, staff, trainees, and recruitment efforts
Contact Lauren Szkodny at lauren.e.szkodny@hitchcock.org if you are interested in being part of the DEIB Committee.