APPIC Hours

[Neuropsych2be]

I will probably be applying for internship next fall and I was looking at the stats on the APPIC website for some of the more interesting internship sites. APPIC gives the average number of direct service assessment and intervention hours accrued. The website also gives the range from highest hours accrued to lowest. I am seeing some extraordinarily high numbers. Some sites are reporting that students on the high end have accrued over 2000 hours of direct service assessment and intervention with clients. Does this sound kosher?? A student like that probably has (I am guessing) about 3500 to 4000 hours of total practicum time if one adds in indirect hours. That translates into what .. about 2 years of full time work while in a graduate program?? I will probably have 1200-1300 hours of direct service assessment and intervention hours and about 900 hours of indirect time and I have been working my ^%$ off. (mostly for free I might add)

Since SDN is full of overachievers, I am curious as to what everyone's impression of these high numbers might be. Is it really feasible to accrue over 2000 direct service contact hours in a doctoral program? Do these numbers possibly reflect people with terminal master's degree's whose practicum hours got added in somehow?? My M.S. required 1300 hours total of practicum with about 800 of that as direct contact. That just about killed me back then but my understanding is that terminal M.S. hours don't really count for much when going through the match process. So what should one make of these huge direct contact hours??

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[KillerDiller]

I'm glad you asked this because the same questions come up for me whenever I browse the APPIC website. I simply don't understand how people get all those hours without counting their work or hours form a Masters program. Or perhaps people accidentally report total hours as contact hours?

Seeing those huge numbers gives me a lot of anxiety. I hope to stay on the 5-year-plan, which means I will apply to internship with 2 and a half years of practicum experience (1st prac year was 14 hours a week, second is 20, third will likely be 24). I will consider myself very lucky if I break 600 contact hours, and I would honestly be happy enough to reach 500.

 

[psychmama]

I'm glad you asked this because the same questions come up for me whenever I browse the APPIC website. I simply don't understand how people get all those hours without counting their work or hours form a Masters program. Or perhaps people accidentally report total hours as contact hours?

I think average hours vary a lot by program. I did a Psyd program where we had practicum and clinic work from our first semester onward. Obviously students in programs with a more research emphasis will have fewer contact hours, all other factors being equal. Also, lots of students are now waiting an extra year to apply in order to be more competitive for internship. If you ask me, it's gotten to the point where students applying for internship often have more clinical experience than many postdocs had years ago when less pre-internship preparation was the norm.

I've heard that many internship sites don't put that much emphasis on the number of APPIC hours, preferring to look at the nature and quality of the experiences the applicant has had. My advisor told us if we had at least 600 hours we'd be okay.

 

[Neuropsych2be]

Thanks psychomama for your input. You know I have a friend in my program at Fielding who last year got 11 interviews and 9 offers from APA approved internship sites after applying to 15 sites. He had about 650 direct contact hours in the doctoral program and another 450 from his terminal M.A. program. Yet this year another friend who has 900 direct contact with about 600 direct contact from a terminal M.S. program, has only received ONE interview this round. He also ahs several years of full time post M.S. experience. What gives??

I also wonder what internships programs consider high quality?? I spent a year doing a practicum at a long term residential program doing psychodynamic psychotherapy and writing long 10-12 page psychological testing reports that had a fairly dynamic flair. I had a cohort of adolescents whom I treated for an entire year intensively with 2 therapy session a week. I also ran 2 groups daily. So I got lots of direct service hours.

Now I am in a community mental health center doing individual and group work with every age group as well as forensic evaluations. But the populations are very different and the experiences are very different with community mental health being short term and very much influenced by managed care i.e. observable treatment goals, measurable outcomes, objective data etc ....

I am getting good exposure with these experiences but just wonder how an internship program gauges "quality" of a practicum placement. well more importantly, how one crafts an application that gives the impression that the training was "quality" .. whatever that means!!

 

[RayneeDeigh]

Well... I'm in a Canadian graduate program that is pretty clinically oriented (although if you ask them they'll tell you they focus on research but they really don't.) So a lot of our students end up taking extra years to finish their research, and since we're only funded for the first 4, students work as psychometrists or things like that while they finish research. That, combined with the fact that we have very full practica for 4 years means that students from my program have ridiculously high numbers of clinical contact hours.

That said, I have heard that once you reach a certain number of clinical contact hours, the extra doesn't really count for much and it can actually be viewed as a bad thing because they figure you haven't focused on your research progress.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't worry, haha.

 

[docma]

Speaking from the perspective of an internship program, I'd say that you should not obsess over the hours numbers--but you should be aware for highly competitive sites that they can be used to help do a first sorting of candidates--so don't have high expectations for a site where your numbers are well below their range.

Because students count numbers differently and good candidates (or their programs) may either minimize or exaggerate hours by how they "count" them, I am skeptical of the value of totals and only look at them when we are down to ranking and I am trying to compare 2 candidates who otherwise seem equal.

What is important is how your experience, as it is relevant to fit with the site, is reflected on your c.v. and how that matches up realistically with what you show as your count of numbers of clients you have seen etc.

 

[TenaciousGirl]

which means I will apply to internship with 2 and a half years of practicum experience

I will be applying with this same amount (2 1/2 yrs) and I have often wondered the same thing. Try emailing the PD at the place you're looking at to get the info of some of their residents. I've talked to some interns who not only gave me more info about the site and what drew them to it, but they were also able to tell me more about their background. One thing I found was that some of the residents had to reapply and in that extra year they gained more hours.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Contact hours are good for making a minimal cut-off for a site, but after that they aren't as influential. Some people get a ton of hours, while others will spend their time elsewhere. It is hard to compare apples to apples because some students/programs inflate their numbers, while others are much more strict.

Also, the split of the hours has some importance. Have high contact hours without as much supervision may raise a red flag. Also, applicants who have limited assessment experience may run into some problems securing interviews at sites that value assessment and/or have it as a core component of their training.

 

[Ollie123]

2000 is definitely a lot, but certainly not impossible. Could be someone who did 6 years at their program before going on internship (not at all unusual). 4-5 years of a 20 hour a week clinical placement and depending on the setting, that doesn't seem an unreasonable number of hours to accrue. The setting is critical...some places you might only have 3 hours/week of direct contact, others you might be seeing people constantly.

Frankly I'm surprised we don't see it more. I'll be happy to hit 600, but I'm also as research-focused as they come. If I spent as much time on clinical work as I do on research I'd probably at least hit the upper 1000's without a problem.

All that said, I've always heard that hours are over-rated anyways. You can have 1000 hours of sketchy, questionable psychological practices that involve doing the same thing over and over, with poor supervision, or you can have 500 hours of diverse experience in solidly evidence-based practice with excellent supervision. My understanding is that internships (at least the sort students from my program tend to apply to) strongly prefer the latter.

 

[KillerDiller]

I'll be happy to hit 600, but I'm also as research-focused as they come. If I spent as much time on clinical work as I do on research I'd probably at least hit the upper 1000's without a problem.

Yeah, this is also something I don't quite understand about my own numbers. I come from a balanced program and, true to its word, I spend approximately 20 hours a week at prac and 20 hours a week at my fellowship/ research position. Considering that classes and other duties still factor in, i don't think I could go more in either direction. Nevertheless, I still won't have very many contact hours at the time I apply for internship.

I'm hoping it's simply because my school has done a good job choosing sites that focus on supervision hours. Hopefully this comes across in my applications. It would be pretty derailing to have to wait another whole year to apply. I'm not sure how I would make that work financially.

 

[irish80122]

I am projecting that I will have between 500-600 hours when the time comes, which I am happy with. I have heard from those who have gone through the process that if you are over 500 then you aren't losing too many sites due to cutoffs. Good lukc to you all! I am going through the internship match next year so I am trying to get as many hours as I can before then!

 

[erg923]

I find that my support hours are a huge chunk of my total----over half actually. I spend a long time writing reports and scoring and analyzing data. For every 6-7 hour npsych eval (direct contact) ill spend another 6-7 hours of support hours (2 hours scoring, 4 hours writing a report, 1 hour chart review). Even in psychotherapy ill do an hour session and spend half-hour mulling over the session (or watching the tape) and writing the progress note. Count in my didactics and supervision hours and well over half my total hours are support.