The aim of the OLOL Psychology Internship is to provide a general preparation for a career in clinical psychology. The overarching goal of the program is to prepare interns for careers as a health service providers in psychology. This is accomplished through training focused on nine profession-wide competencies. The program is committed to providing interns with training in core skills of clinical psychology such as clinical interviewing, psychodiagnostic testing, consultation/liaison, treatment planning, and psychotherapy. Emphasis will be on evidence based intervention and assessment techniques particularly in medical settings. Scholarship is highly valued, and critical appraisal of the literature is emphasized. The faculty are engaged in clinical practice and ongoing scholarship and interns will have opportunities for engaging in scholarly activity. 

The OLOL Psychology Internship is imbedded in a medical setting, which we believe provides an excellent training ground for interns. The intern will work with faculty and staff from a variety of disciplines. Multi-disciplinary approaches are the norm and interns will learn to function in multidisciplinary teams within medical settings.

Baton Rouge has a surprising amount of cultural diversity. Sensitivity to cultural factors is valued by the program and the hospital. The ability to adapt assessment and interventions to the person in their cultural context is emphasized in training program.

Training is arranged with increasing complexity. Supervisors work to expose the intern to more straightforward cases at first and then to more difficult ones as the intern’s skills develop. Supervision is highly structured at first, and becomes gradually less structured as the intern develops more skill and is more capable of functioning independently. Didactics are also arranged to provide basic overviews at first and then delve into more complex topics. Upon completion of the program the intern will be prepared to pursue postdoctoral fellowship in clinical psychology or the post-doctoral supervised practice required for licensure.

Rotations:
Psychiatric Inpatients: Interns will rotate through adult and adolescent inpatient psychiatric units. Psychiatric inpatient rotations involve psychological assessments as requested, group therapy, developing behavior plans and individual therapy. Interns work as members of multidisciplinary teams providing services in these psychiatric inpatient units.

Consultation/Liaison: Interns will have the opportunity to work with medical inpatients as consultants for hospital based physicians. Interns will work in concert with the Psychiatry Residency CL Service. Upon referral, an intern will conduct an assessment of a medical inpatient with the goals of answering the referral question and making recommendations to the referring physician. Following patients during their inpatient stay and brief bed-side interventions may be conducted when appropriate.

The interns are integrated into the suicide prevention program at OLOL which uses the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) model. At OLOL CAMS starts as part of the C/L service, and is continued in the outpatient realm where appropriate. Interns will be trained on CAMS.

All of the training sites will be at the extended campus of Our Lady of the Lake RMC. Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center is a 800 bed hospital with a full variety of surgical and medical services. OLOL has served the parish of Baton Rouge and the 8 surrounding parishes since 1923. OLOL continues to be the largest private non-profit medical center in the state of Louisiana. There are a variety of Mental Health services at the Lake. OLOL Psychology Interns will be an integral part of the inpatient psychiatric provider team, the consult team, and the outpatient clinical team. 

OLOL provides a wealth of possible experiences for the Consultation Liaison service including general medical floors, an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Surgical ICU / General surgery floors. The Consultation/Liaison service answers about 2500 consults a year. A number of specialty clinic experiences are possible. Our Lady of the Lake offers a Geriatric Behavioral Center (GBC) and two adult psychiatric inpatient units: 1- North and St. Clare. 1-North is in the main hospital with 11 beds and a focus primarily on psychotic disorders. St Clare is located across the street from the main hospital. The St. Clare unit treats primarily affective, anxiety, and personality disorder issues. The GBC is reserved for patients over 55 and has 11 beds.