Counting internship/practicums as # of years experience?

[LittleAlbert]

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When clients ask how many years experience you have, or when listing number of years experience on consumer therapist search websites, do you include the years or training experience such as post-doc, internship, practicum?

For example, if you started a practice after post doc, it would seem inaccurate to say zero years experience. Yet, I think some would say training doesn't count.

 

[smalltownpsych]

My training experience counts as experience. With patients I will say that I have been seeing patients since beginning of my doctoral program in 2002 and that I have been a licensed psychologist since 2009. I feel that is fairly clear and honest.

With prospective employers they can see it on my CV and I find that they view the training experience as relevant experience as well. "I see that you worked here, here and here, tell me about it." If they are a psychologist themselves they might substitute the word "trained" for "worked".

 

[smalltownpsych]

I do find though that as my hair gets more and more gray, I get the question less. 🙂 I do continue to emphasize the distinction of the years of training because that is a key point of differentiating from the plethora of counselors or therapists or even complete charlatans of various types. I met once with a gentleman who was in charge of marketing for Aspen Education group which at the time was probably the largest provider of residential services for teens in the country and the point he made that I remember best was that psychologists tend to notoriously undersell who we are and what we offer and what gives us an edge over the competition. He said that maybe someone should do a study on it since it seemed to him to be some type of psychological dynamic at play. 😀

So in other words, by the time a psychologist gets to post-doc or early licensure, they have a lot of solid experience that sets them head and shoulders above the crowd. Just read some of the tripe from the posters pursuing online doctorates and you'll see that if you have an APA doctorate with an APA internship and a psychology license, then you don't need to take a back seat to anyone. Just a little bit of a somewhat related side-rant here.

 

[LittleAlbert]

A very good point. However, when communicating experience versus training to a client, I'm not sure the understand what training means nor do they want to take the time to hear about it. They may assume that training simply means school, or sitting in groups role playing, or shadowing a therapist. They probably don't understand that the training we are speaking of consists of doing the work, with supervision. Moreover, when asked 'how many years experience?' on a web site such as psychology today, you can only write in a number.

I think you are right though, we do sell ourselves short. I'll keep that in mind!

 

[smalltownpsych]

A very good point. However, when communicating experience versus training to a client, I'm not sure the understand what training means nor do they want to take the time to hear about it. They may assume that training simply means school, or sitting in groups role playing, or shadowing a therapist. They probably don't understand that the training we are speaking of consists of doing the work, with supervision. Moreover, when asked 'how many years experience?' on a web site such as psychology today, you can only write in a number.

I think you are right though, we do sell ourselves short. I'll keep that in mind!

With patients that's why I simply state that I have been seeing patients since beginning of doctoral program and give the dates. They all seem to get what this means. In a small town, they also want to know where I am from since they know I'm not from here and so will usually tell them where my internship was in response to that question and since it was at a state hospital, they get what that means too. Some professional people are more interested in the training process since they went through one too so will inquire a little bit more and I will provide that briefly, as well. Then quickly shift to, "so what brings you in to see me today?" This conversation is usually just a few sentences and never more than a minute or two.

 

[researchgirl]

To patients I typically say, "I've been working with patients for X years." and X counts practicum, internship, postdoc, etc. If they ask me more questions I answer them, but I find most don't. Not sure about the website piece because I'm not listed anywhere, but my CV describes my experience...

 

[NotTheHoff]

When I was a post-doc, I was contacted regarding a forensic evaluation under indigent defendant laws. The state required five years of experience to be eligible to offer this service. The court's clarification was that all my pre-doctoral practica counted as years of experience. Since then, that's been good enough for me.