PhD/PsyD Assessing Supervision Quality on Internship

[ImAFreudNot]

First time poster, long time lurker. I am so appreciative of all the advice and wisdom that has been shared on SDN. Thank you in advance!

I'm currently interviewing at a variety of APA-accred internship sites with a child/adolescent treatment focus. As I interview and mull over rankings, I'm struggling to assess the relative quality of the supervision offered at each internship site. Current interns have reported at every site that they are satisfied with the supervision they are receiving, so I'm seeking objective factors to use in helping me assess quality. I have an idea from my own experience in graduate school, and will be discussing options with my current supervisor and other faculty. But I recognize that quality supervision may come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and I don't want to make assumptions about training quality just because it is not in line with what I'm used to in my program.

So, for those of you who feel knowledgeable, what would you say are the elements of supervision that are most important, particularly on internship? Optional sub-questions: (a) If an internship doesn't offer live/taped session watching, is that typical? Or a sign of subpar supervision? (b) How much should a site's purported use of EBTs or manualized treatments be weighed? (c) Is interpersonal fit with supervisors important? (d) Is there any real difference in supervision from someone with a PhD v. PsyD degree?

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[Justanothergrad]

I'm not sure you will find data to concretely use of any of those as predictors of supervision quality. They may provide an opportunity, but it will vary with opinion.

For example
(A) there are plenty of settings lacking resources (CMHCs) or facing other logistical restrictions to make taped sessions not feasible or generally reasonable (BOP, VA, medical settings)

(B) I could argue either common or specific factors as a critical focus, depending on my mood and momentary inclination

(C) We dont know. I am doing a project on this now and there is zero literature. So, maybe? Maybe not?

(D) Depends. You are likely to see greater variability in PsyD than PhD as a function of greater variability of students admitted and their outcomes. This doesn't make one better or worse. One of the best supervisors I had was a psyd. The worst was as well.

My advice: If folks are satisfied and if the sites are good, dont over think things like this. You wont find an answer because there isn't a right one and you may never know "what if" because the answer about which is the right site is almost always "it depends"

 

[Mindfulpsych22]

I agree with Justanothergrad that to some degree, supervision quality may be difficult to predict based off of objective factors and that a site with a reputation for quality training will likely have quality supervisors.

Just speaking from my own experience, here are some factors (outside of the supervisor’s personality, skills and experience, which obviously play a large role in overall quality of supervision) that impacted my experience with supervisors at various sites:

1) how embedded the supervisor is in the setting and whether they do clinical work at the setting. I found this makes a big difference in terms of the type of guidance you can get regarding logistical and administrative issues that may arise at the site. Supervisors who spend little time in your department or at the site may not be as familiar with processes or logistics specific to your work, which may lead to instructions that are difficult to execute or at odds with procedures that come down from admin. As much as we want to think great supervision is all about giving guidance with clinical interventions, paperwork and administrative procedures and demands are also an important part of our job and sometimes impact our training experience to a large degree.

2) how many interns or students the supervisor is responsible for.

3) are the supervisors at a site working together to provide a cohesive training experience for the whole intern cohort, or do they all operate fairly independently?

If you have more interviews I would definitely ask the interns more specifics about in what ways they feel like they have benefited from supervision at their site instead of just whether they think their supervision is good. What specific skills have been enhanced? What challenging situations did their supervision help them learn to navigate more effectively?

Hope this helps!

 

[deleted343839]

I agree with the responses above. My general advice would be to seek out supervisors with expertise in your desired focus/specialty who have been clinically active for a while (not just in clinical research but people with some bona fide clinical effort). It's OK to have others in the mix but there is no substitute for supervision by a skilled clinician who has seen plenty of patients, especially in the type of setting where you would ultimately like to work. But ultimately I think there is value in working with a mix of different supervisors with different styles, orientations, etc.

As to your other questions:

(A) You're not going to get many more opportunities to receive the kind of feedback that can only come from direct observation or recordings. Though sites that don't offer this are not necessary lower in quality, in my view it's a really nice thing to be able to access during this critical year of your training.

(B) I would be wary of any site that didn't openly value empirical evidence in some fashion, but I think the more nuanced answer depends on your training goals. For example, if you want to be skilled in treating OCD, you'd best choose a site with supervisors who are very familiar with ERP. If you want to work with kids in pain, make sure you have a supervisor who is very familiar with the field. Etc.

(C) Interpersonal fit might be hard to gauge on the basis of a single interview, so I'm not sure how much that would help with ranking.

(D) I would not expect a real difference in supervision quality between PsyD and PhD, though I would be wary of graduates of lower quality programs (eg, Argosy, Alliant, etc.). Full disclosure: my worst supervisor ever, by far, trained at an Argosy campus.

 

[ImAFreudNot]

Your responses have all been incredibly helpful. Thank you for helping bring clarity to this difficult process!