How does child experience look at adult internships?

[The Cinnabon]

Hi again

I've been working quite a bit with a pediatric psychology faculty which is ultimately leading to them offering to give me some quality pediatric psychology clinical experiences at our in-house clinic. While I would still consider myself an adult-oriented person, I'm also very interested in gaining this experience and am wondering how people with a larger volume of child related experience look at internships such as VAs and AMCs?

Edit: For what it's worth, my program is pretty rural. Hence me wanting to take ANY specialized high-quality clinical opportunities I can get

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[WisNeuro]

At least for neuro, people with almost all peds experience were not very competitive for internship/postdoc positions at my VA sites. An odd rotation here or there, no problem, as long as their general story and timeline made sense.

 

[The Cinnabon]

At least for neuro, people with almost all peds experience were not very competitive for internship/postdoc positions at my VA sites. An odd rotation here or there, no problem, as long as their general story and timeline made sense.

This is very helpful to know!

I'll be sure not to overload myself on peds experience.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

At least for neuro, people with almost all peds experience were not very competitive for internship/postdoc positions at my VA sites. An odd rotation here or there, no problem, as long as their general story and timeline made sense.

Agreed.

My N=1, so YMMV. I actually had more total peds hours than adult, but I was able to frame my experiences to still be competitive for VAs and AMCs. I explained some of the challenges and opportunities in my cover letter, and I think that helped show how my path still made sense. I had a supervisor leave right before an adult rotation, so I had to switch to a peds assessment placement, so I asked to see "older" peds. I also did peds research w my assessment prof, which helped me realize assessment was my actual passion.

I made sure to put in my cover letter that I applied to sites where I could get adult in-pt experience, and that having a strong assessment background and a lot of exposure to substance abuse and severe pathology would help me with adult populations. I did some mock interviews with my mentor and a few other students, and figured out good answers when asked about fit and my background. The site I matched at was big on "fit" because while it got less apps than say Brown, Harvard Consortium, et al., most of the applicants were high-quality because many of the "local" programs were very strong and people wanted to stay local at least one more year.

I know when I reviewed applications while at a VA internship site, it was not uncommon for applicants to have situations where they wanted more experience in a particular area, but it wasn't available through their training program(s). My big red flags for applicants were inflated numbers (the ratio of supervision hours were usually skewed) and a lack of research productivity. I didn't expect a bunch of 1st author pubs, but applicants had to have at least....something. Present at a conference, publish as abstract, be 3rd author on something. While our internship was "generalist", the majority of the faculty came from a handful of powerhouse programs in the region, and on multiple rotations we had research opportunities and did a lot of journal club reading, so the "research is icky" crowd would have struggled.

 

[The Cinnabon]

Agreed.

My N=1, so YMMV. I actually had more total peds hours than adult, but I was able to frame my experiences to still be competitive for VAs and AMCs. I explained some of the challenges and opportunities in my cover letter, and I think that helped show how my path still made sense. I had a supervisor leave right before an adult rotation, so I had to switch to a peds assessment placement, so I asked to see "older" peds. I also did peds research w my assessment prof, which helped me realize assessment was my actual passion.

I made sure to put in my cover letter that I applied to sites where I could get adult in-pt experience, and that having a strong assessment background and a lot of exposure to substance abuse and severe pathology would help me with adult populations. I did some mock interviews with my mentor and a few other students, and figured out good answers when asked about fit and my background. The site I matched at was big on "fit" because while it got less apps than say Brown, Harvard Consortium, et al., most of the applicants were high-quality because many of the "local" programs were very strong and people wanted to stay local at least one more year.

I know when I reviewed applications while at a VA internship site, it was not uncommon for applicants to have situations where they wanted more experience in a particular area, but it wasn't available through their training program(s). My big red flags for applicants were inflated numbers (the ratio of supervision hours were usually skewed) and a lack of research productivity. I didn't expect a bunch of 1st author pubs, but applicants had to have at least....something. Present at a conference, publish as abstract, be 3rd author on something. While our internship was "generalist", the majority of the faculty came from a handful of powerhouse programs in the region, and on multiple rotations we had research opportunities and did a lot of journal club reading, so the "research is icky" crowd would have struggled.

Thank you so much for this info!

I'm fortunate that our in-house clinic also sees adults, but I expressed an interest in working with said pediatric faculty for some of my clients out of legitimate interest/exploration beyond anything else.

 

[R. Matey]

The short answer is that you want to be sure you have at least some training in the area in which you seek internship. The more you have, the easier the path will be.

 

[Doctor Eliza]

I'll just add...are you sure you aren't a child person? I consider myself both a child and adult person. The child part is very in demand and has opened doors for me. My internship was at a consortium where I worked at an adult site and a child site. Currently, I'm in solo PP and I see about 30% kids, which feels like the right mix for me. I think 100% either way would be too much of the same thing.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Seconded/thirded what's been said above. If you have some experience with children to go along with more substantial experience with adults, that's fine and can look great. If you have a lot more peds than adult experience, it can look to internship sites like you wouldn't be a good fit for a variety of reasons.

 

[The Cinnabon]

I'll just add...are you sure you aren't a child person? I consider myself both a child and adult person. The child part is very in demand and has opened doors for me. My internship was at a consortium where I worked at an adult site and a child site. Currently, I'm in solo PP and I see about 30% kids, which feels like the right mix for me. I think 100% either way would be too much of the same thing.

Very true! I've never actually worked in any clinical capacity with children, which is part of the reason I want to do a child prac. Given how good the child job market currently is, it would have been silly of me to outright reject said experience when it fell in my lap.

Maybe getting ahead of myself, but is there an inverse verdict on being a child person clinically but a majority of my research being centered around adult oriented care during grad school?

 

[smalltownpsych]

In my opinion, broad experience is part of what makes a good psychologist so I would think no child experience would be less desirable than having some sold experience. I have found that every training experience I had has contributed to later experiences. Just one example out of many, when I went to internship and it was exclusively adult we also applied to community placements and I got the better one because it involved adolescents and I had prior experience from first year of my doctoral program. I had no way of knowing that was going to give me an edge and that it would lead to a postdoc job offer.

 

[psych.meout]

Agreed with everything that has been said and I'll emphasize the part about having it fit into your narrative and timeline. You can have a good amount of child/peds pracs and hours as an adult clinician and not have trouble matching as long as you also have enough adult hours/pracs and can articulate why you did that child/peds prac. E.g., Telling internship interviewers that you did lots of child/peds work because your program is rural and there are few options to get enough sheer hours looks bad compared to saying that, say, you're really interested in health psych and there aren't any local adult transplant centers but the nearby children's hospital does solid organ transplant.

Very true! I've never actually worked in any clinical capacity with children, which is part of the reason I want to do a child prac. Given how good the child job market currently is, it would have been silly of me to outright reject said experience when it fell in my lap.

Maybe getting ahead of myself, but is there an inverse verdict on being a child person clinically but a majority of my research being centered around adult oriented care during grad school?

A few things.

First, I'd caution against feeling like you're competent to do child or peds work because you did one prac because the child/peds job market looks so good. I'm adult-focused and I've done a substantial amount of child and peds clinical and research work in grad school and internship, but I wouldn't feel competent to jump into that kind of work professionally without more training and/or consultation. That's not to say that you can't make the transition, but rather that you'd need some pretty substantial shifts in your training and it will get harder (though not impossible) to make this transition the further along you get before making it.

Second and relatedly, yes, you can make this shift if your research is adult-focused and your clinical training is more child- and/or peds-focused, but again, it's more difficult the later you start making this shift (e.g., fewer practicum opportunities, more difficulty matching for a peds internship) and you need to be able to craft this as part of your story. Internship sites are understanding that your interests may have shifted during grad school. They were there too and they know that you may have been set on something when you applied to grad school and kind of got locked into that research for your lab only to later discover you really liked something else. You need to be able to articulate how and why this happened, what your goals are, how that internship and post doc will meet those goals, etc. That child and peds are in demand and lucrative is not a good story to tell.

A friend of mine shifted from adults to peds during grad school but they had difficulty matching for peds internships because the transition came so late (though they were able to shift some of their research work to peds during that transition as well) and they had to accept a more generalist AMC that had some peds rotations but wasn't dedicated to child or peds. They were able to get enough peds experience in late grad school pracs, dissertation, and internship to get a really good peds post doc and currently a faculty position at renowned peds AMC.

 

[The Cinnabon]

Agreed with everything that has been said and I'll emphasize the part about having it fit into your narrative and timeline. You can have a good amount of child/peds pracs and hours as an adult clinician and not have trouble matching as long as you also have enough adult hours/pracs and can articulate why you did that child/peds prac. E.g., Telling internship interviewers that you did lots of child/peds work because your program is rural and there are few options to get enough sheer hours looks bad compared to saying that, say, you're really interested in health psych and there aren't any local adult transplant centers but the nearby children's hospital does solid organ transplant.


A few things.

First, I'd caution against feeling like you're competent to do child or peds work because you did one prac because the child/peds job market looks so good. I'm adult-focused and I've done a substantial amount of child and peds clinical and research work in grad school and internship, but I wouldn't feel competent to jump into that kind of work professionally without more training and/or consultation. That's not to say that you can't make the transition, but rather that you'd need some pretty substantial shifts in your training and it will get harder (though not impossible) to make this transition the further along you get before making it.

Second and relatedly, yes, you can make this shift if your research is adult-focused and your clinical training is more child- and/or peds-focused, but again, it's more difficult the later you start making this shift (e.g., fewer practicum opportunities, more difficulty matching for a peds internship) and you need to be able to craft this as part of your story. Internship sites are understanding that your interests may have shifted during grad school. They were there too and they know that you may have been set on something when you applied to grad school and kind of got locked into that research for your lab only to later discover you really liked something else. You need to be able to articulate how and why this happened, what your goals are, how that internship and post doc will meet those goals, etc. That child and peds are in demand and lucrative is not a good story to tell.

A friend of mine shifted from adults to peds during grad school but they had difficulty matching for peds internships because the transition came so late (though they were able to shift some of their research work to peds during that transition as well) and they had to accept a more generalist AMC that had some peds rotations but wasn't dedicated to child or peds. They were able to get enough peds experience in late grad school pracs, dissertation, and internship to get a really good peds post doc and currently a faculty position at renowned peds AMC.

Oh, I'm a first year at a program that has a dedicated child track. It does get substantially harder to shift into that as you go along in the program (obvs), but I believe I'd have an open invitation after this prac to do all child pracs if I wanted to go down that path. Hence why I wanted to get some child experience earlier rather than later should I want to make that pivot.

 

[psych.meout]

Oh, I'm a first year at a program that has a dedicated child track. It does get substantially harder to shift into that as you go along in the program (obvs), but I believe I'd have an open invitation after this prac to do all child pracs if I wanted to go down that path. Hence why I wanted to get some child experience earlier rather than later should I want to make that pivot.

That's good to hear and likely makes it easier on you. Are you in the child track? If not, you may be given lower priority for child and peds practica than those students in the child track, which may make it difficult for you to get those experiences, especially since you are in a more rural area that likely has fewer practicum sites available than a more urban area. This would be something good to talk about with your faculty mentor and DCT.

 

[RxPsych]

Given that you are a first year, I'm assuming this position will be for an externship during your second year. If so (and I'm not sure how long your program is), you have plenty of time to get at least one year of adult externship experience afterwards. You are at an advantage going onto external practicum your second year; not all programs offer that opportunity so I'm sure you'll be at a competitive number of hours come time to apply for internship in any case.