VA Practicum and Influence on Obtaining APA Internships at VA hospitals
Started by Guruchild
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From what I have gathered, VA practicum experiences are quite difficult to obtain to begin with. However, like O Girl, I don't see how it would hurt your chances for an internship. As long as you have a well rounded application (e.g. a publication or two, and a dissertation in area that is of interest to VA's), I don't see why you wouldn't be as competitive as others.
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Generally it doesn't hurt, although I'd say I'd look more for things like research productivity, breadth of training and how it all relates to "fit" within the scope of my particular program (gero and rehab psych). If these other issues aren't addressed particularly well in the application, whether or not you've had a VA practicum doesn't impress me that much. If you have these things, then a year at a VA might convince me you can hit the ground running at my site.
They shouldn't be. Outside of distance (many small, college towns are not near a VA hospital), students should not have trouble securing practica at VAs or any other sites. Without going too far into the whole "problem with psychology training" debate, if I could change it all, programs would have to have solid relationship with major training sites in their area in order to be APA accredited. That's part of what students pay/work for. There is no reason trainees should have to scrounge for training at the practicum level.
Who says there are any trainees scrounging for practicum experiences? I was predominately speaking to my own experience in competing for a practicum experience as a second year student against third and fourth years students.
My point is that ideally, trainees should not have to compete for practicum experience. I get that it happens in plenty of programs, particularly in metropolitan areas with lots of training programs. But personally, that would be a huge drawback for me. Again, IMO, the weeding out/major hurdles should be taken care of at admissions. Once a person has matriculated, it is the program's responsibility to ensure quality training opportunities are available.
I am. I agree that there is obviously going to be the typical "competition" among students within the program for certain practicum experiences offered by the program. However, I agree with O Gurl that students should not have to scrounge for practicum experiences; that sites should have practicum sites available for their students. Guess what. It doesn't always happen.
My site, an APA-accredited PhD program, is royally frakked at the present moment. We have historically not had a great tradition of providing a wide variety of sites to choose from anyway (i.e., several sites that provide the same 'type' of training with a particular focus that most students find undesirable, which everyone is now fighting over b/c they are the ONLY sites we have available at the present time; we certainly don't have VA practicums
), and over the past few years we have been losing practicum sites and placements left and right, BUT we have ALWAYS, SOMEHOW been able to receive our funding. NO LONGER.I was informed a few days ago that the program is now in the position of having to determine who to pull funding from for the upcoming year, even though they're able to fund a complete incoming cohort of students (care to guess why I'm privy to this info? 😡). In the meantime, earlier in the year, I attempted to secure my department's approval to apply for an external/non-department practicum for the upcoming year. I was denied by both the DCT and my advisor, and one of the reasons they gave me was because the program GUARANTEES FUNDING. Well, guess what, now I am likely going to be one of the few, the proud, the unfunded, AND I will not have a practicum site to boot. Thanks, guys! I truly appreciate it!
Yet we're also told to keep our mouths shut and be happy when APA comes for their next site visit because everything wrong with our program is student-related. 🙄I can understand that the dept is in a pickle with losing *some* of our practicum placements due to the economy. I can also understand that the dept is in a pickle b/c the location of our program sucks. We have a large city nearby that is overinundated with PsyD's and master's level clinicians who are all too willing to drive the distance and work for free. Some of our practicum sites figured this out and stopped paying us. However, when one relies upon a handful of 'x' type of practicum sites. When one does not continue to build a working relationship with other potential sites within the community and nearby for fear that one may hurt one of the current unwanted site's feelings (hell, most of our practicum sites aren't nearby anyway due to our rural location), then you need to do some more networking, damnit, and you need to do it sooner rather than later when it's already too frakkin' late. This was a known problem well before this year, but whenever anyone asks, it's swept under the rug. Students are demanded not to talk about it "because that's not going to happen." Well, guess what, it happened. Now what?
I have to say that at this point, I am seriously contemplating that attending graduate school has got to be one of the worst decisions I have ever made in my entire life, and I have made some doozies out there.
To the original poster, I apologize for hijacking your thread and my rant. I find myself in a bit of a predicament with supposedly "needing" to work on school-related crap but then wondering what's the point . . . 👎
BACK ON-TOPIC:
I'm sure that having a VA practicum certainly can't hurt your chances at a VA internship, and according to some DCT's will serve to improve your odds considerably. At the same time, I do not believe that one should count on a VA practicum as one's "in" to said internship either as they do seem to be such desirable placements for folks applying to internship.
Let me get this straight, your program (DCT) actually discourages external practica? Do they really think the university clinic is the end-all be-all of clinical training and representative of the real world? I can assure them that it is NOT.
You know, once in a I while I might want some actual exposure to the patients and settings most psychologists actually work in. Good Grief...🙄 Are they really that out of touch with non-academic psychology and student training needs, or is there something else that is a road block here?
You know, once in a I while I might want some actual exposure to the patients and settings most psychologists actually work in. Good Grief...🙄 Are they really that out of touch with non-academic psychology and student training needs, or is there something else that is a road block here?
I'm wondering if by "external," paramour simply meant practicum sites with which the university doesn't have a formal agreement in place?
^^ This. Because we do have so very few "external" practicum sites available to our program (and they tend to be "competitive" or "undesirable" for various reasons), we occasionally have students request to work at unpaid practicums outside of our program for which we do not have formal agreements. All requests are almost uniformly denied (unless you're special).
With my particular request earlier in the year, I thought that I might have better luck because of the known problems with losing practicum placements the past few years (and the very real possibility of losing additional placements the current year--and guess what, we did!). Additionally, there was a practicum "fair" in the area earlier this year that we were encouraged to attend to learn more about externship placements in the area (none of which our program has formal agreements with) but that anyone may apply to as long as one has the agreement of one's department. There are a variety of training opportunities and some great sites available; none of which we are currently exposed to in my program. It was then decided that students should not apply for such opportunities because they're unpaid and would place too much of a burden on students when our dept allegedly guarantees our funding and it would require students work multiple practica/assistantships (*fast forward to current day when they're now deciding who to axe*). Instead, we should see it as a networking opportunity (for what?! these positions have all been filled!), and/or potentially consider it as an opportunity to apply if we're still around in upcoming years when we're applying during our internship year. At this point, I don't see why I would bother applying to bolster my application for the handful of weeks at the beginning of the fall semester when my internship packet should be fairly complete AND I would likely need to take off a significant period of time during the spring semester if I were to receive any interviews during the internship period anyway.
But, y'know, I'm simply a lowly student in this whole process. What do I know? 😕
When I indicated that I wished to apply to these sites to gain more diverse clinical experience, I was informed that I could always return to our university clinic. This is what I will likely end up having to do (and what others have been required to do) simply because we have a shortage of sites. I have ONE external practicum site, and as it's looking at the present time, I may not receive another. The only thing that may save my arse actually is to guilt them in to signing an external practicum agreement with a site who they do not have to pay (but who they have had a formal agreement in the past) if/when they pull my funding. This may work out better in the long run anyway as it gives me the training/experience that I'm lacking and that I wanted (at the site that I wanted before they lost it)... It will simply suck great big donkey balls (pardon my language) that I won't have my funding, which will force me to make some decisions. 🙁
Aaaand, here I go hijacking threads again.... MODS, feel free to split this elsewhere if you wish. I feel badly as this isn't necessarily VA talk but more of my ranting/raving!
Paramour,
I am sorry to hear you having this much difficulty from your program. It sounds like there are some opportunities for external practicum placements despite your program's rural location. The barrier seems to be your program's unwillingness to make agreements with these sites--with or without pay. 🙁
Have the students thought to petition to your DCT/leadership? Has this practice adversely affected your program's match rates? Just hard to hear that your DCT's response is to continue with the same limited options.
I am sorry to hear you having this much difficulty from your program. It sounds like there are some opportunities for external practicum placements despite your program's rural location. The barrier seems to be your program's unwillingness to make agreements with these sites--with or without pay. 🙁
Have the students thought to petition to your DCT/leadership? Has this practice adversely affected your program's match rates? Just hard to hear that your DCT's response is to continue with the same limited options.
I second this advice. I'd imagine if there are one or two things that DCTs will universally rally to prevent, they would be a significant decline in internship match rates and a significant increase in attrition. Best of luck, paramour; it's a crappy situation to have to deal with.
To address the OP: I know this wasn't the exact question asked, but I can provide my own anecdotal example--a VA is about the only type of externship placement that my doctoral program doesn't provide, but I was able to land an internship spot at a joint VA and academic medical center. As another poster mentioned above, it seemed that sites were more interested in a) diversity/breadth of training and b) goals that were clearly in line with those of the site than they were any specific type of practicum experience.
Thanks for the support, guys. I really had to gripe but I really have no where else to do it unfortunately. 👎
The DCT is well aware of the situation. Well aware of students' complaints re: the lack of diversity in practicum sites and the lack of sites in general. The DCT also is the one who stamps DENIED across just about every student's request for an unpaid practicum outside of the department and tells us all NOT to discuss the "issues" surrounding the lack of externships with new/incoming students or applicants. Be happy and all that jazz.
Our match rate for the past decade squeaks by in the low 80s%. Often, we hear that it's because the students limited themselves. Some of these students will admit that they limited themselves when applying. We live near one of those major city areas where there are already a lot of folks who want to stay and a lot of folks who want to move here for various reasons. Some of the folks who didn't match round 1 have families and limited themselves geographically (of course, some other folks who didn't match limited themselves geographically b/c they simply wanted to live in a particular area of the country). Then, there are others who reportedly did not match because they applied to sites outside their "reach" and not enough within their "reach." And the list goes on . . . From 2006 to 2009, our match rate fell below 80% (again, with it's typically the students' fault, never anything to do with the program's contribution). The last two years we *thankfully* have matched 100%, which has caused everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. I suspect this will be short-lived once everyone hears news about just how deep the funding cuts go.
We do have quite a few students leave the program or take extended leaves of absence--sometimes the faculty attempt to coerce you into them (again, the program can always explain them away due to students' "personal issues"). Other students take longer than average to complete the program, which has been another improvement over the past few years due to some changes but progress is slow.
At this point, no one wants to speak with anyone because it's all been said numerous times and no one listens. Or they claim to listen but can't do anything because their hands are tied, or lay responsibility at the students' feet instead. There are students who are "pushed" through the program and think everything's dandy, so they don't give a darn what's happening as long as they get what they want and everyone else be damned.
I honestly feel for the incoming students to this program. I think that the progress made thus far is tremendous for the growth of the dept, but I don't believe it to be nearly enough. I think it's too little too late and that too much time was wasted sticking fingers into holes to plug up problem areas rather than finding long-term solutions.
And to think that this was my #1 program. I had serious doubts about it after I interviewed simply due to its "atmosphere," but I was so damned ecstatic that I was accepted I didn't question it further other than being interview jitters. I recall a conversation in one of the current graduate applicant threads stating that they could/would handle anything as long as it meant that they could attend graduate school (versus having to reapply another cycle). I'm not so sure about that sentiment.
/vent
Thanks again! I'm hoping to know more within the next few weeks, but I'm really not being too optimistic at this point. Unless we have more than a few students go into "hysterical fits" and take leaves of absence, opening up some funding (which I find sad that this even happens at all in our program but to each his/her own!).
Still not sure how I'm expected to be motivated to work on my dissertation with this hanging over my head. We're not going to fund you, but you need to get your work done anyway. Um, yeeeah, m'kay. I'll get right on that. 😎
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