How many hours do you work at your internship?

[areyoubusy]

Just curious about the following:

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week?
How many hours of supervision, didactics?
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)?

Thanks in advance! Having an issue at my placement and I'm trying to see if I'm unreasonable.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[erg923]

Just curious about the following:

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week?
How many hours of supervision, didactics?
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)?

Thanks in advance! Having an issue at my placement and I'm trying to see if I'm unreasonable.

7 years ago:
40
4 supervision hours weekly and 2 hours weekly of didactic (most weeks)
15-18 (most weeks)

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Mine were similar to erg's. Maybe 40-50 hours on-site, depending on the week. And might've been closer to 4 hours for didactics when including grand rounds and the like.

 

[beginner2011]

I'm currently on internship.

on site: 40-45h
supervision: 2h scheduled + 2-4h ad-hoc
didactics: 2h scheduled, 0-4h elective throughout the week
direct clinical care: 12h-16h

 

[GradStudent2020]

Currently on internship
40 hours per week (no overtime allowed)
4 hours of supervision
10 hour minimum direct client contact

I don’t have a hard number about didactics but it seems like a lot. Some are required, many are optional. Some weeks none, other weeks 2 full days a week.

Actual client contact varies from week to week between 10-20 hours per week. It all feels very doable and I can (to some extent) decide how to spend my time (therapy, assessments, population, and available trainings)

 

[AbnormalPsych]

A few years removed from internship.
On site 35 ish. We had some reserved research hours that could be completed off site
4 hours minimum formal supervision - 2 indiv; 2 group. Often more here and there as needed/as things came up
2-3 hours of didactics (presentations to the whole cohort, specific clinic journal clubs, etc)
Probably 15 hours direct care. But this depended on the rotation. Ranged pretty drastically but never more than 20.

 

[mypointlesspov]

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week? - 40ish hours
How many hours of supervision, didactics? - Individual supervision: 2-3, didactics: 5-6 depending on the week
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)? - our max caseload is 14 individual, one group, and one evaluation at a time. That being said, I'm in community MH so this can vary depending on whether clients show up. I don't have a full caseload yet so I'd say like 10 hours per week.

 

[deleted836592]

Just curious about the following:

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week?
How many hours of supervision, didactics?
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)?

Thanks in advance! Having an issue at my placement and I'm trying to see if I'm unreasonable.

Perhaps this conversation would be easier if you shared a loose sketch of what your internship is asking of you?

 

[Spydra]

I'm not internship yet, but this is the kind of thing that I wish were tracked across sites to provide a better sense of the time commitment across activities and what is common vs not common.

 

[PsyDr]

1) 40hrs
2) 3-5hrs supervision; 2-5hrs didactics.
3) super low; like 12-20hrs. I typically was able to get those done by end of work Tuesday.

 

[foreverbull]

1) 44 hours per week minimum
2) 4-6 supervision hours (group, individual, sup of sup)
3) about 2+ hours/week didactics and/or regular 2x/month trainings (diversity, DBT, etc.)
4) 12-18 client range

 

[areyoubusy]

Thanks all! The internship is in 2 sites, adult and teen. In the adult side, we were supposed to see 5-6 clients - this was the initial information and what has been done in past years at this site (our postdoc just did the internship last year). The offer/agreement letter or whatever said a 40 hour week. They recently doubled our caseload at the adult side to 8-10.

Splits:
Physically AT placement each week: probably 48-50 hours
Supervision: 3 individual, 1 group, 1 staffing meeting
Didactics: ranges 6-7 hours depending on whether grand rounds occurs.
Therapy: Right now, 8 adult patients (goal is to be at 10), 2-3 teens, 2 families, 6 groups (totaling 18 direct scheduled hours, not including "stepping in" at the milieu throughout the time I'm at my teen site, and I work with EDs so this also doesn't include meal monitoring).
Dedicated research time: 4 hours

So... yeah. It feels like a LOT. I travel between sites (20 mins away), have care coordination for kids & their outside providers, plan for groups, prep/reading for didactics, and of course notes/admin stuff. I am feeling so burnt out since my caseload went even from 5 to 8.

Thoughts? Am I being dramatic?

 

[WisNeuro]

18 direct hours isn't that much, we were expected to average in the 18-20 range. You need to find places you can be more efficient. At the internship level, this is usually in charting. Find ways to be more efficient in chart review and writing notes and you'll likely be able to grab back a few hours of your week. It's a good thing to learn now, as many FT jobs after internship/postdoc will be looking for you to have 28-32 billable hours during the week.

 

[areyoubusy]

The problem (i.e., what makes this miserable) is not the clinical hours, honestly. It's typically the didactics. 7 hours of didactics means we can't schedule during that time - we lose an entire day for scheduling the clients.

 

[WisNeuro]

The problem (i.e., what makes this miserable) is not the clinical hours, honestly. It's typically the didactics. 7 hours of didactics means we can't schedule during that time - we lose an entire day for scheduling the clients.

It can suck, but it's similar to what you'll encounter if you are working in a hospital or institutional setting, only those 7 hours will be filled with mostly pointless admin work and meetings. You get good at multi-tasking.

 

[mypointlesspov]

The problem (i.e., what makes this miserable) is not the clinical hours, honestly. It's typically the didactics. 7 hours of didactics means we can't schedule during that time - we lose an entire day for scheduling the clients.

Are you being penalized for not seeing clients often enough or something? Or is it a matter meeting a productivity requirement?

 

[areyoubusy]

I think it's that the psychiatry department feels that we aren't contributing enough, not the internship per se.

 

[erg923]

The problem (i.e., what makes this miserable) is not the clinical hours, honestly. It's typically the didactics. 7 hours of didactics means we can't schedule during that time - we lose an entire day for scheduling the clients.

Why 7 hours a week? My feedback to the TD would be less sitty, more doey

 

[WisNeuro]

7 hours of didactics is slightly high. I think we were at 4-5.

 

[Justanothergrad]

18 direct hours isn't that much, we were expected to average in the 18-20 range. You need to find places you can be more efficient. At the internship level, this is usually in charting. Find ways to be more efficient in chart review and writing notes and you'll likely be able to grab back a few hours of your week. It's a good thing to learn now, as many FT jobs after internship/postdoc will be looking for you to have 28-32 billable hours during the week.

I've also seen many places (VA and Counseling centers) that are looking for closer to 23-28 billable per week. But agreed, a majority of the efficiency gain is in notes and chart review.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

7 hours of didactics is a bit high, yeah, but it's not entirely unusual for an entire day to be devoted to some combination of didactics and research time.

The rest of the hours seem fair.

RE: the above comments, our expectation is 90% billable time (i.e., 36 hours/week), at least in terms of how your clinic grid is setup. I honestly couldn't tell you the RVU benchmarks based on that, or what they figure in terms of no-shows/cancellations.

 

[123EW]

I completed internship at a VA

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week? 40 and not a second more
How many hours of supervision, didactics? Supervision = 3 hours (2 individual and 1 group); Didactics = 4 hours
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)? Varied greatly. My site was truly about training and growth and focus on direct clinical care was only to meet training and licensure requirements, not billing requirements.

Question for OP: Why would the psychiatry department believe interns are not contributing enough? Interns are not low-cost labor, they are interns. Psychiatry should be more concerned about what they are contributing to your training vs. the other way around.

The more I hear and read about sites taking advantage of interns, the more grateful I am for my internship experience.

 

[erg923]

Interns are not low-cost labor, they are interns.

Lets keep it real. They are both.

 

[WisNeuro]

Lets keep it real. They are both.

Interns actually cost our site money. Our site is far from unique in this fact. We need to stop pretending that training programs are making a killing from having interns. Easier in the VA, when you don't have to worry about billing and the like, but they are a financial and time black hole. We do it because we enjoy supervision and training, and want to give back to the field, not because they make great financial sense

 

[erg923]

Interns actually cost our site money. Our site is far from unique in this fact. We need to stop pretending that training programs are making a killing from having interns. Easier in the VA, when you don't have to worry about billing and the like, but they are a financial and time black hole. We do it because we enjoy supervision and training, and want to give back to the field, not because they make great financial sense

I just meant that is indeed a popular viewpoint in some programs, especially ones that are not familiar with the psychology internship model and more familiar with the medical model...where "interns"and residents are indeed viewed as both.

 

[WisNeuro]

I just meant that is indeed a popular viewpoint in some programs, especially ones that are not familiar with the psychology internship model and more familiar with the medical model...where "interns"and residents are indeed viewed as both.

I haven't seen that. I've seen more that a certain level of productivity is asked for by administration to justify the loss we take on the training program. Even so, that productivity is generally far below what is expected of a full-time employee. I just don't see the reality or the utility of advancing the false narrative that interns are somehow low-cost labor. They are getting a valuable training experience that is generally paid for by others. I'm always very up front on the business side of things with my trainees. I show them what gets billed for certain services, and talk about common productivity requirements. It'd be good if we were all more open about the business side of things, rather than railing against make believe injustices.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I've certainly had experience with administration who views interns as low-cost labor, asks why they aren't camped down in Primary Care seeing patients for screenings and risk assessments back-to-back all day, etc. These same administrators don't seem to have had a particularly supportive or positive view of training in general.

 

[deleted957633]

Currently on internship
40 hours per week (no overtime allowed)
4 hours of supervision
10 hour minimum direct client contact

I don’t have a hard number about didactics but it seems like a lot. Some are required, many are optional. Some weeks none, other weeks 2 full days a week.

Actual client contact varies from week to week between 10-20 hours per week. It all feels very doable and I can (to some extent) decide how to spend my time (therapy, assessments, population, and available trainings)

Mine is very similar. At a VA and generally here 40 hours a week, 2ish hours of structured supervision but I get more on the fly, and at least 10 hours direct pt contact if not more. Didactics is at least 2 hours a week guaranteed. sometimes we have a full Friday. just depends.

 

[pediatric_psydoc]

Just curious about the following:

How many total hours are you physically AT your placement each week?
How many hours of supervision, didactics?
How many hours of direct clinical care (individual, group, or family therapy)?

Thanks in advance! Having an issue at my placement and I'm trying to see if I'm unreasonable.

Two years ago (inpatient acute psychiatric hospital):

On site 45-50 hours a week
Supervision: 2 hours of individual w psychologist, 2 hours of group, 2 hours with psychiatrist (per week)
Didactics: 12 hours a month
Direct clinical care: 20-30 hours a week (individual therapy, assessment, group therapy, and some family therapy)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk