I've been looking into this and it seems like all the programs MAKE you take 2 years to finish roughly 30 credit hours...what the heck? They split it up so you're taking like one class every weekend. 30 hours can be done in 1 year. I assume the reason for this is because the programs are to new to have a sufficient amount of faculty teaching the classes to run people through in a year.
My question is, can you do the practicum hours while completing the degree and how many hours do you need? It seems some programs make you start the practicum after 2 YEARS of courses. I guess I can stomach that if I am working in a practice in the meantime, but it really depends on how long that practicum is supposed to be following the courses.
Please for the love of God do not "yahoo answers" me on this and give me a link or some non-decisive answer on this; if you don't know, don't post. This kind posting just derails hot-topic arguments.
To sum it up, how many years after graduation does it take to have rxp? I assume the post-doc would be in medical psych.
Your comment on the length of the RxP program is astute. APA's campaign fodder refers to it as a "two year master's degree". In reality, it is one year of online courses stretched out to two years. Heck, make it a five-year degree and take it easy! In fact, legislation proposed by APA's surrogates has specified only 300 contact hours, which is 20 semester hours equivalent.
As for the "master's degree" this was originally a certificate program that got some lipstick put on it (and the fees went up). There is no master's thesis or project. The curriculum was designed by APA and students take a "national test" which was designed by APA solely for this, which also decided the passing grade. In other words, the training and certification are entirely in-house projects by the organization that spends millions lobbying for it.
Supervised hours do vary from state to state. In Missouri the proposed bill only called for "weekly supervision" by someone who can prescribe. Thus, it could have been 30 minutes on the phone with a dermatologist from anywhere in the country. That's how weak the standards have been, and that's why 162 bills have failed in 16 years. This year 12 bills failed in 7 states, the seventh straight year of shutouts with worse prospects than ever for next year.
The supervised hours would not be medical psychology. Medical psychology refers to psychologists who practice in a medical setting and/or assess and treat individuals psychologically who have medical disorders. The term has been bastardized by the APA RxP campaign to mean those very few psychologists who are practicing medicine based on non-medical training.
However, RxP is and has ALWAYS been available to psychologists. We can simply take the extra medical training available to anyone, including your mailman, to get this authority. In my state a "true" two-year program will make you a PA and give you far, far more authority to prescribe and treat patients. (And anyone taking that route will be worth their weight in gold.) However, APA doesn't want you to do that because then the organization will not reap the financial and political benefits.
A dual-trained psychologist will be able to practice far more broadly. In New Mexico prescribing psychologists cannot prescribe off-label. Additionally, they have to be supervised, and have all their prescriptions approved, by the patient's primary care physician anyway.
Thus, the RxP campaign is not only bad for public health, it's a ripoff of psychologists who do indeed want to add medical practice to their repertoire. Those who are truly interested in this should be telling APA to stop with the power politics and help them get the proper medical training.