Psychometrics and Clinical Skills Question(s)

[CogNeuroGuy]

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My first question is: How long did it take you to learn how to administer various psychometrics (Trails, WAIS, etc.), how long did it take you to learn how to score and interpret results from these tests? Secondly, did you experience significant amounts of anxiety when first starting out administering tests to patients, and even learning therapy skills?

Is it impractical to set the idea of learning 15 different tests within a 2 month time period when you have had no experience in psychometrics?

 

[bcliff]

My first question is: How long did it take you to learn how to administer various psychometrics (Trails, WAIS, etc.), how long did it take you to learn how to score and interpret results from these tests? Secondly, did you experience significant amounts of anxiety when first starting out administering tests to patients, and even learning therapy skills?

Is it impractical to set the idea of learning 15 different tests within a 2 month time period when you have had no experience in psychometrics?

I'm applying to clinical PhD programs now, so I can't speak to your exact questions, but after I graduated with my BS, I spent 18 months working as a psychometrist in private practice for a psychologist where we administered dozens of assessments, and I learned a lot about testing administration and scoring during that time. I also coordinated the insurance for the practice and became very familiar with billing and the hurdles accompanied by insurance reimbursement for mental health services.

I'm working as a psychometrist now for a lab, and we only use a handful of tests, but I am more familiar with these tests and feel more comfortable with both administering and scoring them than I did with the testing we used at my old job. I feel like the 3 years that I've taken off between undergrad and (hopefully) starting grad school has really been invaluable and has laid a firm foundation for me to build on during grad school. We'll see how it all turns out.

 

[erg923]

Learn to give=handful of times.
Learn to interpret=never ending.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

To answer the first question--I began testing during my first semester of grad school, and felt comfortable administering our standard battery (which was probably about 10 tests in all, if we're counting things like the WAIS and WMS as single tests) after about a month. Same went for scoring, as the two co-occurred. I'd had no experience with testing prior to that. I was anxious prior to my first testing session, but given how standardized the measures are, it wasn't unbearable and was largely gone by probably halfway through the assessment. As for interpretation, heck, I could say I'm still learning aspects of that.

Second question--depends on the person, the teacher, and which 15 tests we're talking about. Some folks could do it, while others would probably struggle.

 

[CogNeuroGuy]

MMSE, MoCA, Verbal Recognition of the WAIS (VR 1 and 2), Logical Memory (baseline and delay of course), CVLT, Digit Span (fw. and back), Boston Naming, Trails A and B (Reitan version), Digit Coding (WAIS), WCST, TCST (Texas Card Sorting), GDS, FAS, Verbal Fluency (veg. and animals).

Some of these tests like WCST and TCST are only done in one form of battery, depending on the patient we test, one is used over the other. Most of the battery is the same with some tests being substituted over others.