Pediatric Psychology Postdoc

[pediatric_psydoc]

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Is it realistic to seek a postdoc with a pediatric psychology focus if the majority of practicum and internship experience was in child psychology? My goal is to be board certified and so I will be seeking a formal postdoc.

I can provide some specifics on my professional background if that assists in answering the question. My experiences in practicum were in an interdisciplinary outpatient pediatric clinic and an inpatient psychiatric hospital. My internship will be at an APA accredited inpatient psychiatric hospital with 2/3 of the year focusing on children. I have 6 publications in peer reviewed journals and they focus on child psychology and child psychiatry. My dissertation is child focused as well.

Is a child background, rather than pediatric background, sufficient, or are most postdoc sites looking solely for candidates who did an internship in a children's hospital?

Thank you in advance.


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[soccercat]

I would say that you can potentially get away at some sites if they have a split child clinical or psychiatric focus along with Peds Psych...but you really need to have some kind of health focused training to be competitive for a formal (as in APPIC/APA accredited) postdoc that is 100% Ped Psych. It's a growing field with few training options so it's getting very competitive very quickly.

 

[deleted407083]

I would say that you can potentially get away ...but you really need to have some kind of health focused training to be competitive...

Agreed! I had done prior experience (practicum) that sort of counted as peds psych, and my internship is set up to do mostly child clinical experiences. However, I pushed to gain more peds psych experience.

If your internship is flexible enough to offer some rotations, it would be to your benefit. During cover letter and interviews, I definitely focused on my peds psych experiences and defined my non-traditional skills as applicable. They definitely want someone comfortable in hospitals and able to work with the interdisciplinary teams. Flexibility and openness I found was a huge plus. Also, looking for postdocs it seemed to be a split between more research-focused (some up to 60% research) with specific carve outs (onc or transplant) vs. more clinical general peds psych (usually 0-20% research; consult-liaison services). The latter appealed to me more because I did not have specific depth of experiences to qualify for the former and concerns of licensure hours after 1 year.

I'm very happy with the postdoc I obtained (almost 100% peds psych), but it was a (do-able) difficult process not coming in on the formal peds psych path!

 

[pediatric_psydoc]

Agreed! I had done prior experience (practicum) that sort of counted as peds psych, and my internship is set up to do mostly child clinical experiences. However, I pushed to gain more peds psych experience.

If your internship is flexible enough to offer some rotations, it would be to your benefit. During cover letter and interviews, I definitely focused on my peds psych experiences and defined my non-traditional skills as applicable. They definitely want someone comfortable in hospitals and able to work with the interdisciplinary teams. Flexibility and openness I found was a huge plus. Also, looking for postdocs it seemed to be a split between more research-focused (some up to 60% research) with specific carve outs (onc or transplant) vs. more clinical general peds psych (usually 0-20% research; consult-liaison services). The latter appealed to me more because I did not have specific depth of experiences to qualify for the former and concerns of licensure hours after 1 year.

I'm very happy with the postdoc I obtained (almost 100% peds psych), but it was a (do-able) difficult process not coming in on the formal peds psych path!

Ok, so in my cover letters I'll try to focus on my experiences in a hospital setting (inpatient hospitals, not general or children unfortunately) and comfort with interdisciplinary approaches and teams. I am also interested in clinical general peds rather than research focused/specific clinical rotations in oncology or transplant. I do not know how I'll be able to get experience in peds during internship, as it is an inpatient psychiatric hospital and I'm pretty sure most of the children there will have more psychological illness than medical illness contributing to psychological illness.


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[soccercat]

If there are patients that happened to have medical issues on the unit I would try to vie for those and make it a point to tell your supervisors that you'd like to learn about behavioral management of chronic illness. So if there are any patients that have a serious injury or diabetes, celiac, or really anything that is a childhood illness/injury try to get those. Even children who may be bereaved because of someone else's illness is helpful. Only a small number of patients are needed to at least get introductory experience (2-5), so don't feel like you need to get 10+. When you write your cover letters you can then highlight that you have had the ability to work with patients and understand how mental and physical illness influence each other, etc. etc.

 

[pediatric_psydoc]

If there are patients that happened to have medical issues on the unit I would try to vie for those and make it a point to tell your supervisors that you'd like to learn about behavioral management of chronic illness. So if there are any patients that have a serious injury or diabetes, celiac, or really anything that is a childhood illness/injury try to get those. Even children who may be bereaved because of someone else's illness is helpful. Only a small number of patients are needed to at least get introductory experience (2-5), so don't feel like you need to get 10+. When you write your cover letters you can then highlight that you have had the ability to work with patients and understand how mental and physical illness influence each other, etc. etc.

These are great points. I will definitely seek out these experiences. Thanks for the suggestions 🙂 I'm glad to hear that I can still try to gain these experiences in an inpatient psychiatric setting.


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