A NYTimes article last week on unpaid internships and the abuse of free labor (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html) got my fellow doctoral classmates and I thinking about externships. I'm not sure how it works on other parts of the country, but almost all externships in NYC are unpaid. Students were beginning to spend so much time at their externships that the a new rule went into effect mandating that externship sites require no more than 16hours/2days from their externs in 2010-2011.
At one outpatient hospital externship (unpaid, of course), the program can not operate without externs. Externs outnumber full-time staff and the program practically shuts down for one month in the summer when there are no externs. The hospital bills over $200 for each weekly therapy session a patient has with an extern.
It also seems that the anxiety over securing a psychology internship has made conditions worse for students in externships. First, students feel they need their externship supervisor to write them a letter or rec for internship so the students avoid doing anything that could "jeopardize" a good letter (e.g. requesting less hours, speaking up when their caseloads are becoming unmanageable, etc). Second, students feel they need to "accumulate more hours" for internship and keep trying to fit more externships into their graduate training.
Student research obviously suffers when a student is largely consumed with clinical work. It just seems wrong that externships can become a way for clinics/programs to get free clinical labor to the point of giving externs the kind of caseload that is more appropriate for paid staff.
At one outpatient hospital externship (unpaid, of course), the program can not operate without externs. Externs outnumber full-time staff and the program practically shuts down for one month in the summer when there are no externs. The hospital bills over $200 for each weekly therapy session a patient has with an extern.
It also seems that the anxiety over securing a psychology internship has made conditions worse for students in externships. First, students feel they need their externship supervisor to write them a letter or rec for internship so the students avoid doing anything that could "jeopardize" a good letter (e.g. requesting less hours, speaking up when their caseloads are becoming unmanageable, etc). Second, students feel they need to "accumulate more hours" for internship and keep trying to fit more externships into their graduate training.
Student research obviously suffers when a student is largely consumed with clinical work. It just seems wrong that externships can become a way for clinics/programs to get free clinical labor to the point of giving externs the kind of caseload that is more appropriate for paid staff.