Education and training

As a major pediatric teaching facility for the Feinberg School of Medicine, considerable staff time and facilities are invested in the training of students from several disciplines. Professions currently represented on the department staff of fifty people include psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, speech therapists, recreational therapists, nurses, clinical educators and milieu therapists. Active training programs draw students and trainees in pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology and social work for full-time placements. Additional part-time or part-year placements are arranged for students in clinical education, speech therapy and recreational therapy.

At present, funding is available for three full-time, twelve-month internships in child psychology. Typically, two to four graduate students from Northwestern University's clinical psychology department arrange for a practicum experience in testing and/or therapy in our department. A fully funded post-doctoral position is also available. Preference for filling this position is given to current interns.

Seminars

Interns attend seven hours of seminars and case conferences per week. "Topics in clinical child psychology and psychiatry" meets weekly for one hour. This seminar is designed to help interns and psychiatry residents develop an appreciation for professional issues and for conceptual models and research related to the practice of clinical child psychology and psychiatry. Issues related to ethics, professional concerns and childhood psychopathology are discussed. Some of the topics include ethical guidelines, diversity issues, educational placement, taxonomy and classification, and categories of childhood psychopathology. The treatment seminar meets weekly for one hour and focuses on techniques of individual child therapy, parent training, and treatment issues such as adoption and foster care. This seminar draws heavily on case material.

The medical psychology seminar meets for two hours weekly during the summer and then for one hour weekly until mid year. This seminar concentrates on special topics in pediatric psychology, including the effects of chronic illness on children and families, psychophysiologic disorders and consultation in a medical setting.

Interns also attend a weekly family therapy seminar, which meets for 1-1/2 hours and includes didactics on a variety of topics in family therapy along with with live supervision.

Daily rounds in pediatric psychology and a biweekly multidisciplinary, one-hour case conference in child psychiatry feature presentations by both interns and staff psychologists of current cases that involve compelling diagnostic or treatment issues. Additional didactic experiences include Grand Rounds in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and the Warren Wright Series, a guest lecture series sponsored jointly by the medical school and Children's Memorial Hospital. Last year's speakers included such nationally known researchers as John Curry, PhD; Joe Pierri, MD; Sam Meisels, EdD; Geri Donenberg, PhD; and Larry Greenhill, MD.

Supervision

Staff psychologists typically devote one or two hours per week to supervision. During the course of the year, each intern is assigned two supervisors for their work in general outpatient services (one of whom is the director of training), one supervisor in outpatient pediatric psychology, and one supervisor for their testing service cases. Typically, an intern receives at least one-hour of supervision for every two cases he sees. Supervision for inpatient cases is provided by the medical director of the inpatient unit and supervision for partial hospitalization cases is provided by the social worker who is the clinical director for this service. While an intern is participating on the consultation-liaison service, he is supervised on a rotating basis by all the pediatric psychology staff and the consultation-liaison psychiatrists. Thus, each intern receives approximately five hours of supervision per week. Although most of the supervision is done by psychologists, interns also receive supervision by members of other disciplines.

Video recording units, audio units and observation rooms are available in the department for use by interns and their supervisors. All interns are expected to videotape at least some of their therapy sessions during the year and are observed live in the family therapy seminar.