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1 APAIIID ivision12 Board Members and Contributors: President:Daniel N. Klein, Brook UniversityPast-President:Antonette M. Zeiss, Central Office, Washington, :Lee Anna Clark, of IowaSecretary/Treasurer:Elizabeth Hayden, of Western OntarioMembership Committee Chairs:Sherryl Goodman, UniversityDouglas Mennin, UniversityDivision 12 Representative:E. David Klonsky, Brook UniversityListserv Manager:Michael B. Miller, of MinnesotaEditor:William P. Horan, of California, Los AngelesTable of Contents:Feature Article:What is the role of clinical internships in training clinicalscientists?A. Spirito, E. McQuaid, J. Nash, G. Tremont, G. Francis,L. Weinstock, M. Andover ..2 Announcements2008 APS Student Poster Election SCIENCES ociety for the Science of Clinical PsychologySection III of the Division of Clinical Psychology ofthe American Psychological AssociationNewsletterDeveloping clinical psychology as an experimental-behavioral scienceFall 2007 IssueClinical Science is published as a service to the members of Section III of the Division of ClinicalPsychology of the American Psychological Association.

2 The purpose is to disseminate currentinformation relevant to the goals of our Articles may be submitted to the editor via e-mail. They should be approximately 16 double-spaced pages and should include an abstract of 75- to 100- Articles may also be submitted,and should also include a 75- to 100-word articles should be submitted as an attachment to an e-mail and formatted according to thePublication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th : William Horan, INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORSA rticles published in Clinical Science represent the views of the authors and notnecessarily those of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, the Societyof Clinical Psychology, or the American Psychological Association. Submissionsrepresenting differing views, comments, and letters to the editor are ScienceFall 2007 Issue2 Feature Article:What is the role of clinical internshipsin training clinical scientists?

3 Anthony Spirito, ABPP, Elizabeth McQuaid, ,Justin Nash, , Geoffrey Tremont, , Greta Francis, ,Lauren Weinstock, , Margaret Andover, University Clinical Psychology Training ConsortiumClinical psychology internships are often considered thetraining year with the purest clinical focus, when academicresearch activities are put on hold for a period of intensiveclinical activity. This interpretation, however, neglects manyimportant opportunities that such internships can provide infostering the development of clinical scientists. Given therange of patient populations, faculty role models, and oppor-tunities to integrate research and clinical activities, intern-ships have the potential to provide exposure to and training inthe conduct of clinical research in general, and appliedscience in , internships expose trainees to a broader patientpopulation than typically encountered at most graduateschool practicum sites.

4 This may include training withpatient groups with more severe psychopathology, or withgreater cultural and socioeconomic diversity than previouslyencountered. Internships that are hospital-based may alsoprovide exposure to patient populations with medical condi-tions or significant medical and psychiatric exposure to more diverse patient groups may helpstudents formulate research questions with more clinicalrelevance, and potentially more importance to the mentalhealth community than would be possible without suchexposure. From this perspective alone, one could make apersuasive argument that the internship is necessary to trainclinical internships also have the potential to provide avaluable broadening of clinical research and research careerperspectives through interactions with on-site faculty. Intern-ship faculty conducting research in clinical sites can provideexcellent and often novel role models for trainees.

5 For manyinterns, being exposed to a clinical research program inwhich the faculty member not only treats certain types ofpatients but also conducts research with these patientsprovides a unique perspective on clinical research that maynot have been encountered in graduate internship settings, faculty and interns collaboratewith other faculty, trainees, and staff from various may provide the first opportunity for psychologytrainees to collaborate with psychiatrists and psychiatryresidents, as well as physicians and other health careprofessionals from a broad range of disciplines. As a result,interns may develop an appreciation of the different levels ofresearch knowledge and skill among various professionalgroups. Just as multidisciplinary approaches influenceclinical care models in internship settings, multidisciplinaryresearch programs are often the norm on internship.

6 Expo-sure to professionals from diverse backgrounds who provideconsultation and input into research teams can help gener-ate more sophisticated, integrative research questions. Asexamples, interns may participate in mental health treatmentresearch that combines medication management andbehavioral interventions, or observe research with medicalpopulations that integrates behavioral and biomedicalconceptualizations of in the real-world setting of internship, whether itis a community mental health setting, state hospital, oruniversity-affiliated hospital, may also increase real worldrelevance of research. Internships often give traineesexposure to real-life clinical situations that need to beconsidered when they design future research or disseminateresearch findings outside the research clinic setting. Forexample, one of the authors supervised an intern on a caseof a young boy with uncontrollable behavior during spinaltaps who was referred by the pediatric oncology intern was excited to be assigned the case because herdissertation research had been an intervention study on justthis topic.

7 Nonetheless, the intern was unable to success-fully intervene in this boy s out-of-control behavior. When thesupervisor explained that this level of behavior difficulty wasnot atypical of our referrals, the intern noted that the level ofdyscontrol and associated behavior was an exclusioncriterion for her dissertation. This revelation led the intern tore-conceptualize the type and intensity of intervention shewould propose in future some trainees, internship may be their first exposure toa manualized treatment. Understanding how manualizedtreatment needs to be adapted when it becomes clear thatthere is more complex psychiatric comorbidity than originallyidentified is another formative experience for neophytetreatment researchers. Thus, Internships can provide theClinical ScienceFall 2007 Issue3opportunity to utilize a flexibility within fidelity approach(Kendall, 2001).

8 Internship also provides trainees withexperience engaging and maintaining engagement of thesepatients under real-life conditions that will inform them asthey develop strategies to engage similar clinical internship directors and faculty members considerclinical science in developing their curriculum?Unfortunately, clinical science is probably given insufficientattention in most internship programs. APA accreditationrequires relatively little attention to issues related to clinicalscience, with the possible exception of the requirement toprovide training in empirically supported treatments and strategies of scholarly inquiry. In practical terms, there maybe many impediments to integrating clinical science into thecurriculum in an effective manner. For example, at the sitelevel, the need for intern positions to cover certain clinicalresponsibilities may foster a more service-oriented model,with inadequate time for training and supervision in clinicalresearch.

9 At the accreditation level, the increasing number ofrequirements from APA regarding internship training, training in supervision, also affects time available forresearch can internships do to contribute to the develop-ment of clinical scientists?There is a wide range of activities that internships mightconsider to promote the training of clinical scientists. Belowwe discuss a range of options from the most basic that most,if not all, internships could embrace to fairly unique researchtraining should provide practitioner-scholar trainees with anopportunity to be exposed to clinical research, as well as anopportunity to witness the effects of research on clinical workin a real-world setting. At the most elementary level, intern-ships are mandated to provide training in evidence-basedtreatment. This most often occurs in didactics through internseminars, and in training clinics.

10 Internship supervisors,however, could also seek to identify training cases that lendthemselves to the use of empirically supported treatmentprotocols. Additionally, clinical supervisors should beencouraged to integrate recent research findings abouteffective clinical approaches in the context of clinical supervi-sion. We have found that students learn particularly wellwhen findings from the scientific literature can be linked toclinical cases. This modeling of the practitioner-scholar approach should play a central role in internship might also sponsor journal clubs in which thelatest scientific data pertinent to a population encounteredduring internship might be presented. Interns and traineesfrom other relevant disciplines could be included to foster themultidisciplinary perspective of the group. This in turn mightlead to conceptualizing future research questions with amore clinically relevant focus.