Postdoctoral Fellowship
Facility and Training Resources/ Requirements for Completion / Administrative Policies and Procedures
Program Structure
The Southern Arizona VA Health Care System (SAVAHCS) Postdoctoral Fellowship program is a full-time, one-year program, consisting of a 2080 hour training requirement, including authorized leave. The training is supervised experience designed to meet Arizona State Board of Psychologists criteria for supervised post-degree hours towards licensure. The starting date is flexible, beginning between August to September (but must begin at the beginning of a pay period). The residency program workload will consist of primarily clinical work, estimated to be 60% of the time, 20% of scholarly inquiry (i.e., research/performance improvement/program evaluation), 10% inter-professional treatment team staffing/consultation, and 10% didactics/professional development with some flexibility on these percentages depending on individual areas of interest and inherent variations in accessible training opportunities. A minimum of four hours of regularly scheduled supervision will be provided. The salary is $46,422 per year.
The fellow’s program is individually tailored at the beginning of the year by the fellow and mentoring psychologist, taking into account individual training needs. This mentor-based model extends to didactic work, where the fellow identifies several areas of interest and/or weakness to address in the treatment and assessment of trauma-related disorders. This becomes the basis of a monthly brown bag seminar hosted by the fellow. Postdoctoral Fellows are expected to operate like other professional psychologists, and as such their weekly schedule will reflect involvement in the various trauma programs.
Each fellow selects a psychologist from the primary supervisory staff to serve as a mentor during the fellowship. The mentor supports the fellow’s training and assists the fellow with non-clinical issues related to professional development, problem resolution, administrative issues or other needs not directly related to patient care. The fellow meets at least once monthly with his/her mentor.
Involvement in research will be an optional activity. There are a few opportunities at SAVAHCS for involvement in research; however the emphasis is largely in service delivery. In addition, there are a number of opportunities to develop clinical projects from current performance improvement outcomes in the outpatient trauma related clinics. The postdoctoral fellow will develop a project, usually involving program evaluation and development, from such data or in programs that they are involved in. Postdoctoral fellows who are interested in pursuing PTSD research are encouraged to apply for career development awards through the VA system.
Facility and Training Resources
Each fellow will be provided with their own office, in the Mental Health outpatient building. Each office is equipped with a free-standing computer that has access to the SAVAHCS local area network and the internet. The SAVAHCS medical library is available to fellows, and on-line access is available to its catalogue, literature search engines, and other resources.
Medical Support Assistants (MSA) provide clerical support by scheduling veterans for appointments into the computer system. They also greet and check each veteran in. Technical support is through the information technology department and the IT helpdesk regarding any urgent problems regarding the computer system.
Seminars and Professional Development Activities
The Post-Doctoral Fellow will be participating in regular didactic activities including, but not limited to, regular scholarly reading in the trauma literature, enrichment seminars, relevant in-services, workshops, and teleconferences. These are important activities for professional development.
The fellow will be provided with/or directed to appropriate readings and/or workshop activities needed to provide scientific and scholarly exposure to relevant research, theory, and principles associated with assessment and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This includes access to the intern “library” of materials on empirically supported treatments. On line resources will also be identified for core reading (An excellent source is www.ncptsd.com ). The facility library also has excellent resources (both printed and audiovisual) which the fellow is encouraged to explore.
The postdoctoral fellow participates in more formal didactics, which reflect our view that the post-doctoral resident is similar to staff members, in terms of level of continuing educational needs. As such most didactics are the same as what staff attend. These include:
1) The twice monthly psychologists meeting (Weds 11 a.m.)
2) Presenting the monthly Brown Bag trauma meeting (Third Thursdays at noon). The fellow will also develop and lead (in consultation with their mentoring Psychologist) the Brown Bag seminar on topics relevant to treating trauma.
3) The fellow attends additional educational seminars as noted below:
- MST Teleconference Training Series
First Thursday of every 2 months—beginning in August; 9 am (daylight savings time) 10 am (standard time)
- PTSD Consultation Program Lecture Series
Third Wednesday of each month; 11 am (daylight savings time) and 12 pm (standard time)
- Monthly Diversity VTEL Didactics
Second Wednesday of every month; 10 am (daylight savings time) and 11 am (standard time)
- Monthly Continuing Education via Phoenix VAMC (APA CE)
Third Wednesday of the month; 8 am, in room 1102
The Evaluation Process
Evaluation Schedule
Initial Informal Evaluation: At the beginning of the fellowship, the post-doctoral fellow completes the Post-Doctoral Evaluation of Competence and Training, that provides a self-evaluation in the areas of psychological assessment, clinical intervention, team function, professional development, and supervision skills. The self-evaluation serves as the background to the learning contact that is established between the program supervisors and the post-doctoral fellow.
Competency Evaluations: Written feedback is provided at 3 intervals during the training year; 4, 8, and 12 months. In addition, regular verbal feedback is given during supervision sessions and during monthly meetings with the Director of Training. These competencies are consistent with the scholar-practitioner model of training and provide quantitative as well as qualitative measures of progress.
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Requirements for Completion
Fellows need to satisfactorily engage in their individualized training plans and review progress regularly. They need to attend required training and seminars as well as comply with other administrative requirements of the fellowship. On the competency rating forms, the fellow must achieve competency at the high intermediate to advanced skill level on 80% of the items by the end of the first four months of the fellowship. By the end of the fellowship, the fellow must achieve competency at the advanced skill level on 80% of items on the competency rating forms. Additionally, fellows need to have not been involved in any breaches of the APA Ethics Code.
The program will elicit regular feedback from the fellow, on a trimester basis, as well as informally. The fellow will meet monthly with the Director of Training. Effectiveness in training includes taking part in the review of clinical cases that is a standard part of quality management at this facility.
Effectiveness in training can be seen in ability to obtain professional positions in treatment and/or research in the area of trauma. Therefore, the program’s effectiveness will also be evaluated by monitoring the professional achievements of fellows after their completion of the program. They will be sent an evaluative questionnaire to complete one year after they have finished the residency program and again three years after completion. These will provide information on strengths and weaknesses of the postdoctoral program from the retrospective view of former fellows who have had a chance to consider how the training program facilitated their professional development and success or failed to do so.
Administrative Policies and Procedures
Leave policies follow the national VA standards for sick and annual leave. Five working days of Authorized Absence will be granted for approved professional activity including attendance at educational events, conferences, and similar activities. To be approved, educational events or conferences must be relevant to practice or research in clinical or counseling psychology. The professional relevance of the activity is judged by the Director of Psychology Training, after consultation with other staff psychologists as necessary. Please note that job interviews do not qualify for Authorized Absence.
Self-Disclosure: We do not require fellows to disclose personal information to their clinical supervisors except in cases where personal issues may be adversely affecting the fellow's performance and such information is necessary in order to address these difficulties.
