About VA Oklahoma City Healthcare System
VA Oklahoma City Healthcare System serves more than 66,000 Veterans in 48 counties in Oklahoma and 2 counties in north central Texas. Our anchor facility, the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center (VAMC) is a 192-bed teaching hospital within the 325-acre Oklahoma Health Center campus just outside of downtown Oklahoma City. Additionally, the Oklahoma City VA Healthcare System includes 14 Community-based Outpatient Clinics. Our psychology internship program is based out of the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center with all but two available rotations occurring at this location.
Training Aims
The fundamental training aim of the Oklahoma City VA internship program is to provide high-quality adult generalist training, clinical experiences, and supervision in health service psychology, such that upon completion of internship, interns have attained the profession-wide core competencies for psychologists as identified by the American Psychological Association: Research; Ethical and legal standards; Individual and cultural diversity; Professional values and attitudes; Communication and interpersonal skills; Assessment; Intervention; Supervision; Consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills. Upon successful completion of the internship program, interns will be functioning at the level of competence and independence expected at the postdoctoral level and developmentally ready for entry-level practice in psychology (i.e., employment or postdoctoral fellowship). As we know that many VA interns intend to continue their careers working with Veteran and/or military populations, there is an emphasis on understanding military culture, providing psychological services to the Veteran population, and familiarization to working within the VA culture and organizational structure.
Training Program Structure
To meet the goals of the training program, interns will be exposed to a broad range of supervised clinical experiences and didactic education. Clinical experiences include 13 possible major rotations available and 17 possible minor rotations available (this number includes major rotations which may be instead taken as a minor). During the year, interns will complete two major rotations and two minor rotations.
Major rotations available include:
• Ambulatory Mental Health Clinic
• South Oklahoma City Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) Mental Health Clinic
• Geropsychology Program (inpatient/outpatient)
• Health Psychology Clinic
• Primary Care Mental Health Integration
• Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Center
• Substance Treatment and Recovery (STAR)
• Trauma Recovery Services
• Affirmative Care/LGBTQ+ Program
• Chronic Pain Rehabilitation
• Neuropsychology Clinic
• Telemental Health
*Minor rotations available include:
• Suicide Prevention
• Inpatient Psychiatry Unit
• Military Sexual Trauma
• Administration & Leadership
•*Each Major Rotation above can usually be taken instead as a Minor rotation
Additional training opportunities (does not comprise a full rotation):
• Intensive Community Mental Health Recovery Services
• Family Mental Health
• Research
Our Approaches to Competency Development
•Interns will spend 2 hours per week in didactic activities from our training staff, covering a range of subjects pertinent to trainees’ competency development.
•Our program approaches interns’ achievement of diversity competency through multiple modalities. These approaches include incorporation of diversity throughout didactic programming; offering clinical opportunities to work with diverse clientele; exploration of client diversity in clinical supervision; and training/use of culturally-informed approaches to treatment. Interns will be exposed to quarterly experiential activities to promote cultural awareness and self-reflection.
•Our program is structured for interns to develop competence in psychological assessment. Each week, the interns will attend group supervision with two of our training staff on administering tests, scoring and interpreting test data, and writing assessment reports.
•During the training year, interns will receive intensive training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).
•Interns will achieve an understanding of the scientific foundations of clinical practice during their internship year. This will be obtained from various means such as clinical supervision within rotation, EBP group supervision, and didactic education.
•Each week, interns will receive one hour of supervision from their major rotation supervisor and one from their minor rotation supervisor (total of 2 hours of regularly scheduled, individual supervision per week). Additionally, interns will receive one hour of group supervision devoted to assessments and one hour of group supervision devoted to EBP.