VA Sierra Nevada Health Care System works from a generalist, scholar-practitioner model internship that includes rotations in outpatient mental health and in-patient medical/surgical/rehab health care settings. Anticipated rotations include Mental Health Clinic; Behavioral Medicine Consultation and Liaison Service; PTSD Clinical Team; Addiction Disorders Treatment Program; Neuropsychological Assessment; Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Program; Integrated Behavioral Health Clinic; Geropsychology and Home Based Primary Care; Mental Health Inpatient Unit; and Mental Health Leadership and Administration. Other activities include our weekly didactics series; Journal Club; monthly seminars on diversity, military culture, and psychological assessment; a Diversity Project; individual and group supervision; and faculty mentor program. An optional long-term project, toward which up to 4 hours a week can be devoted, allows interns to build their skills in specific desired areas, to gain more experience in evidence-based interventions, to pursue research interests, or to develop further skill under the supervision of an expert in a given area.
Our Vision:
“To prepare our psychology interns for long-term success in health service psychology.”
Our Aims:
1. To develop in our interns strong core generalist skills in health service psychology through competency-based supervised training.
2. To prepare interns to function competently within an integrated health care system, particularly the Veterans Health Administration.
3. To support our interns in preparing for the next step in their professional careers.
Because we are a smaller program, we are able to offer our interns a degree of flexibility often not possible in larger programs. To a large extent, interns are able to fashion individualized training plans that allow them to pursue their areas of professional interest while also growing in each of the program's required competencies. We pride ourselves in offering a personalized training experience with the opportunity to develop close professional relationships with members of many health and mental health care disciplines. Because of the high quality of our program, our internship graduates have consistently been selected for prestigious post-doctoral residencies and full-time employment. Several of our former graduates have stayed or returned to become staff psychologists.