Clinical Rotations – General Adult Track

Clinical Rotations – General Adult Track

12-month Rotations

Center for Cognitive Therapy. At the Center for Cognitive Therapy, we offer training in both the psychotherapy process and the diagnostic interview process using the Cognitive Model and Evidence Based Practice. We treat a wide range of both emotional disorders and personality disorders. Supervision is offered by therapists who are both certified cognitive therapists and licensed psychologists or social workers. Primary supervisor: Cory Newman, PhD

Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. The Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic (OPC) provides individual and group psychotherapy to the Penn community and to the larger West Philadelphia community. The OPC is a multidisciplinary team clinic including social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and nurse practitioners. Psychotherapy orientations include psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, and eclectic. Providers use time-efficient treatments ranging from short-term psychodynamic to trauma-informed to rational emotive behavior to dialectical behavior therapeutic approaches, as well as many in between. Primary supervisor: Elizabeth Kingfield, PhD

The Psychosis Evaluation and Recovery Center (PERC) is a SAMHSA funded program providing both first episode psychosis and clinical high risk coordinated specialty care services to individuals from Philadelphia and surrounding counties. The trainee will play a lead role in ensuring high quality specialty care for each client in coordination with a multi-disciplinary team, including psychiatrists, psychologists, family psychoeducation and support therapists, supported employment specialist, and peer support specialists. Training opportunities within this framework will be customized to each intern’s training goals. The trainee will provide individual therapy, engaging youth in recovery oriented cognitive therapy (CT-R) integrated with complementary therapeutic strategies, with the aim of promoting recovery and relapse prevention in youth who have experienced early psychosis. Training in the assessment of psychosis using both unstructured and semi-structured approaches will be provided, and the trainee will have the opportunity to participate in client and collateral interviews during the intake evaluation process, as well as to conduct symptom monitoring assessments. Other opportunities include facilitating or co-facilitating groups, including CT-R for families, psychoeducation for families, processing for patients, and cognitive remediation. In addition to on-site supervision (weekly) and team meetings (twice weekly), there are numerous training and supervision opportunities through PERC’s participation in the Pennsylvania Early Intervention Center/HeadsUp, which provides ongoing training and education for early psychosis providers across Pennsylvania, and in the Connection Learning Health System hub of the Early Psychosis Intervention Network (EPINET). Primary Supervisor: Monica E. Calkins, PhD, Associate Professor and Associate Director of PERC.  **Note also available as a 6-month rotation

Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness. Interns in the Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness will receive supervision in the provision of evidence-based psychotherapies to women presenting with mental health conditions related to reproductive health complaints. Didactic sessions, journal clubs, and group and individual supervision will focus on providing interns with an understanding of the psychological effects of common reproductive life experiences such as pregnancy, the postpartum period, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (or other menstrual cycle related mood changes), infertility, pregnancy loss, midlife changes/menopause, and chronic health conditions that interact with reproductive health. The PCWBW is a collaboration between the departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology. We provide clinical care to women throughout the lifespan and in both an outpatient psychology clinic and in an embedded women’s health clinic at HUP (The Helen O. Dickens Center). Primary supervisor: Sara L. Kornfied, PhD; Director, Maternal Wellness Initiative.

6-month Rotations

Assessment & Consultation Rotation will have two primary components. First, each intern will be expected to complete 6 full batteries on complex adult patients from the community on a variety of differential diagnostic questions, including evaluations for Learning Disabilities, ADHD, Intellectual Disability, TBI, dementia, psychoticism, executive functioning, and general diagnostic clarification. Interns will be expected to have facility with structured diagnostic interviewing, as well as the WAIS, WMS and WIAT, the CVLT, the MMPI-2 and MMPI-2-RF, the DKEFs, and use of computerized CPTs. Any intern not having previous experience with these specific instruments should do the rotation in the first part of the year, and should participate in summer didactic instruction specific to those measures. The second component of the rotation will be the opportunity to provide supervised supervision to clinical psychology graduate student trainees at the University of Pennsylvania completing their introductory practicum in Assessment and Consultation. Interns will provide some live supervision of the trainee’s cases, will collaborate with the trainee on choosing tests and measures and refining their diagnostic case conceptualization, will edit and comment on the trainee’s draft assessment reports, and will join the trainee and the senior supervisor for the final feedback session with the patient. This rotation is an opportunity to refine differential diagnosis and case conceptualization skills, to maintain and expand facility with various tests and measures, and to provide an invaluable service to the diverse community in the greater Philadelphia area, most of whom would never be able to access comprehensive assessment outside of our clinic. Primary supervisor: Melissa Hunt, Ph.D.

The Joan Karnell Supportive Care Program. The Joan Karnell Supportive Care Program at Pennsylvania Hospital has a long history of partnering with Penn Medicine psychology trainees in an effort to provide psychosocial care to patients struggling with cancer and sickle cell diagnoses. In this tradition, psychology interns on this rotation provide individual short-term psychotherapy (eight sessions) to patients with cancer/sickle cell diagnoses and their family members. Opportunities for couple and family treatment also occasionally arise. Our trainees take a flexible approach to treatment. Depending on the client's needs, psychotherapy might involve exploratory engagement, supportive techniques, or some combination of the two. Each intern carries a caseload of ~6 patients and has the opportunity to facilitate support and/or therapy groups with patients/caregivers. Our interns are also integrated into the medical, supportive, and palliative care teams. Supervision involves both a weekly individual meeting and a weekly group meeting. Primary supervisors: Jennifer Slipakoff, MSW, LCSW.

The Penn Medicine Autism Clinic. The Penn Medicine Autism Clinic serves individuals from 12 months of age through adulthood and provides initial diagnostic assessments as well as comprehensive behavioral/psychological evaluations for patients with prior autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses. Our mission is to use gold standard assessment tools, in conjunction with family-centered care, to facilitate parents’ understanding of their child’s unique developmental/behavioral profile and how that relates to the child’s intervention/educational needs. Families are then connected directly to quality, evidence-based intervention that is most appropriate for their children. The intern will participate in comprehensive treatment-planning evaluations for individuals with autism. Primary supervisor: Keiran Rump, Ph.D.

Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety. On this rotation, trainees will receive intensive training in exposure and response prevention (ExRP) for obsessive compulsive disorder. Participants will also receive training in prolonged exposure therapy (PE) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) depending on availability of training cases. Additionally, participants will receive training in a variety of evidence-based treatment manuals for other anxiety-related disorders depending on the chief complaints of patients on their caseload. Trainees will conduct individual therapy and group therapy. Primary supervisors: Lily A. Brown, Ph.D., Director & Elizabeth Turk-Karan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor.

The Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. The Center for Weight and Eating Disorders provides evidence-based individual psychotherapy services and psychological evaluations for bariatric patients preparing for surgery. Interns will be trained and supervised in the administration of bariatric evaluations and letter-writing, while interacting with a multi-disciplinary team. They will also have a small caseload of patients seeking psychotherapy for presenting problems such as binge eating disorder, weight management (often by referral of medical specialists), night eating syndrome, bariatric-related issues, and body image issues. Primary supervisor: Kelly Allison, PhD

Consultation/Liaison Service. This rotation takes place in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where interns are part of the C/L team. The C/L team is contacted whenever medical inpatients in the hospital are reporting emotional distress or other psychiatric concerns. Interns respond to these calls with a bedside evaluation of the patient to determine what services they might benefit from. This often leads to conducting short-term therapy while the patient is in the hospital, and then helping them find a place to continue treatment after discharge. Interns work alongside psychiatrists and social workers for an interdisciplinary team approach. Primary supervisor: Samantha Zwiebel, M.D.

Inpatient Psychiatry Unit. The inpatient unit is located at Pennsylvania Hospital, which is part of the Penn Health System in the Center City neighborhood. Interns provide evaluation and therapy for inpatients and are an important component of the treatment team. Each morning, interns will round on the unit with the attending psychiatry and other providers followed by case conference. Interns will spend 3 months each on a unit focused on mood disorder-spectrum cases and 3 months on a psychosis-spectrum unit.  Primary supervisor: Reed Goldstein, Ph.D.

Pain Medicine. Over 80 million adults in the United States suffer from chronic pain. Often patients with patient present with multiple medical and psychiatric co-morbidities which requires a multimodal approach. The PENN Pain Medicine Center provides diagnostic assessments, a variety of interventions including neuromodulation, injections, medication management and behavioral health care. The behavioral medicine clinic sees 10-12 patients per day and provides preoperative psychological evaluations, CBT/ACT and co-management of patients with chronic pain and concomitant substance use disorders. Interns will be involved in direct patient care under supervision, exposure to interventional pain care and provided opportunity for scholarly activity (case reports, review articles). Primary Supervisor: Martin D. Cheatle, PhD, Associate Professor

Penn Memory Center. The Penn Memory Center (PMC) is made up of a multidisciplinary team with expertise in neurology, gerontology, psychiatry, neuropsychology and social work. The PMC serves as a unified Penn Medicine source for those age 65 and older seeking evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, information, and research opportunities related to symptoms of progressive memory loss, and accompanying changes in thinking, communication and personality. This one day/week position is designed for a trainee who is interested in learning about neurodegenerative disease, working with older adults, and obtaining experience with cognitive screening for individual's with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias. Primary Supervisor: Dawn Mechanic-Hamilton, Ph.D., ABPP-CN

Penn Trauma Violence Recovery Program: The Penn Trauma Violence Recovery Program (PTVRP) provides individualized psychosocial support, goal setting, and service connection to Philadelphia residents treated for violent injury at Penn Trauma to promote holistic recovery and prevent recurrent violent injury. Some patients, particularly those with prolonged hospital stays, would also benefit from supportive psychotherapy prior to hospital discharge. The psychology intern will provide 8 hours per week of clinical care to PTVRP participants prior to hospital discharge, dedicated to patients with prolonged hospital stays and/or substantial distress . The intern will conduct indicated psychological assessments and bedside, trauma-informed psychotherapy. Psychiatry consultation will be obtained as needed. This rotation will provide psychology interns with exposure to the challenges faced by patients recovering from violent injury and will provide patients with timely, psychological care that can speed their recovery and streamline management of mental health challenges. Primary Supervisor: Nora Brier, Ph.D.