Clinical hours during PhD

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I thought of this reading the internship thread, but figured I might as well start a new thread. In terms of accumulating clinical hours for internship, I'm curious about the differences between schools. How many people do you test and see for therapy through your in-house clinic? When do people typically do externships?

At my school, we do assessments on 2 adults/2 children, and see 4 patients a week for therapy through our in-house clinic in years 2-3. We have the option to continue seeing patients in the clinic after 3rd year, but it isn't required. I think externships vary a lot between students, but it is rare for people to do them before 3rd year. People also get diff clinical hours from clinical research (like SCIDs).

So how is it different for you/people you know/your school?

 

[psychanon]

Mine sounds pretty similar to yours. In our first year we do some practice assessment stuff. In years 2 and 3, we're required to do 80 therapy hours per year, and the norm is to have 4 therapy clients a week in the in-house clinic. You are also required to do one full battery testing case per year for your 2nd and 3rd years, which counts as 10 hrs (but which takes a lot more...I hate testing). Most people keep seeing the same caseload after their required hours are finished, but that might taper off as they get closer to internship. You're not allowed to do an externship before your 3rd year, and you're not required to ever do one (most do but many don't). Most people accumulate hours through their labs as well, but that varies by lab. The 80 hrs thing is the APA minimum, btw, so nobody at an APA-accredited program has less than that. Everyone does way more than the minimum, but this definitely isn't a place where people are accumulating 20,000 hours by internship (and I wouldn't want it to be). I think a lot of programs have almost identical rules as mine, because it's the APA minimum and a lot of research-oriented programs hover around that.

 

[JockNerd]

Sounds close to mine. Year 2 is about 3 clients/week in the student counseling centre, year 3 is another slightly more involved year with students or an externship with between 10 and 15 hours on site each week (there seem to be many more externship sites than students, and most sites say they're quite flexible for working days and hours). Many of those externships are paid.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

On-site and off-site hours are pretty similar hours here. Year 2 is 12-15 hours/wk. (#'s depend on type of client and if there are full battery assessments, etc) Year 3 is 15-20 hrs (also dependent on the type of client).

-t