Tracking Hours During Internship (specifically neuropsych related)

[pinky&thebrain]

Does anyone know of any formal guidelines on how to track hours during internship?

I'm currently in internship and my program strongly encourages that we track our hours just in case we run into problems while applying for licensure (some states are more strict than others and since many of us aren't completely certain where we want to end up living, we figure it's better to have it and not need it). The impression I got was that we do not need to track everything like we did during grad school. We were given a tracking spreadsheet that includes only face-to-face contact (including sex of client), supervision, and didactic hours. That's simple enough. What got me confused was that we were told that time spent writing neuropsychology reports and scoring neuropsychology testing should be included as "face-to-face" hours. This surprised me since these hours were counted as "support" hours in grad school. Has anyone else heard anything similar?

I want to emphasize that my question isn't about whether I should or should not be tracking (it's simple enough and takes me a few minutes each week), but rather what/how to track. Thanks!

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[WisNeuro]

. That's simple enough. What got me confused was that we were told that time spent writing neuropsychology reports and scoring neuropsychology testing should be included as "face-to-face" hours. This surprised me since these hours were counted as "support" hours in grad school. Has anyone else heard anything similar?

I want to emphasize that my question isn't about whether I should or should not be tracking (it's simple enough and takes me a few minutes each week), but rather what/how to track. Thanks!

Report writing and scoring ARE NOT face to face hours. They are clinical support hours. They are counted as part of your clinical care delivery, but not as part of your direct F2F hours. Similar to intervention stuff, note writing and the like is not F2F.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

Agreed with WisNeuro. Those functions are billed the same as the face-to-face testing, but I wouldn't consider them face-to-face hours.

Then again, you can check with state licensing boards directly, as they may still count those activities in their "direct patient care" (or whatever) category to avoid penalizing neuropsychology interns who spend half their clinical time scoring and writing rather than providing therapy.

Thinking back, I actually don't know that my licensing application specifically asked for face-to-face hours, but instead specified that I received X amount of supervision and performed X number of hours of clinical work.

 

[WisNeuro]

I think mine required a internship that was x amount of hours. Something that equated to a full time position, and that something like approximately 1/4 of your time was spent in F2F interactions. with a larger proportion in direct patient care. 25% F2F is pretty easy to accomplish.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I think mine required a internship that was x amount of hours. Something that equated to a full time position, and that something like approximately 1/4 of your time was spent in F2F interactions. with a larger proportion in direct patient care. 25% F2F is pretty easy to accomplish.

Thinking back again, I believe mine was similar, and I was confusing the internship section for the post-doc section.

 

[pinky&thebrain]

Hmm...sounds like I should clarify this with my training director. Perhaps they meant that neuropsych scoring and report writing should be counted as "service related hours," but not as face-to-face hours. That way, as AA mentioned, all that neuropsych time counts for something.

 

[WisNeuro]

I would assume that is what they meant. Face-to-face means exactly what it says. Direct contact with a patient. Now, clinical hours, service related hours, patient care time, those can all mean a lot of different things.