O V E R V I E W

The Vanderbilt-Department of Veterans Affairs Internship in Professional Psychology, (the Consortium) is a consortium through which a number of Middle Tennessee agencies combine their services and training resources in order to create an internship program of greater richness and variety than any one of them could offer alone.  The internship has been in existence since 1965 and has been accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1971.  Over three hundred fifty interns have elected to participate in our program, coming from the following universities:

All of the Consortium agencies, except the Alvin C. York VA Campus (in Murfreesboro, TN, about 40 miles distant) are located in a large University/Medical Center complex and are in walking distance of one another.  Also nearby are libraries, theaters, gymnasia, health care facilities and all of the other amenities expected in an academic center.  Nashville is a pleasant city with a refreshing mixture of small city ambiance and big city attractions.

The Consortium is a cooperative effort of five Middle-Tennessee organizations; all engaged in the delivery of mental health services.  The agencies that make up the Consortium are the Vanderbilt University Psychological and Counseling Center, the Alvin C. York and Nashville Campuses of the VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Division of Adult Psychiatry (both part of the Vanderbilt University Department of Psychiatry).  These agencies and the training experiences each has to offer are described in more detail under the "Agencies" sections of this site. 

Because of the number of affiliated agencies and their differing missions the Consortium is able to offer an unusually wide variety of clinical training opportunities.  This strength also leads to one of the frustrations of the Consortium internship in that each intern is able to sample only a fraction of the training opportunities available.  An individual intern’s experience is determined by his/her selection of a primary and secondary placement (see internship structure), and interns’ experiences will be quite different (e.g., a primary placement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry vs. one in the Psychological and Counseling Center).

The Consortium is thus structured to provide an in-depth, immersive experience at one agency, which should be congruent with the intern’s primary interest area (e.g., university counseling center, academic medical center) while also providing a substantive training experience in a different setting, which may allow either the pursuit of special interests, or the strengthening of areas of weakness in the intern’s past training experience.

All of the Consortium agencies share the recognition that the internship is usually a developing psychologist’s last year of intensive clinical training and supervision.  Therefore, although research opportunities are available across all Consortium sites, the primary focus of the internship is on the acquisition of clinical experience in a well-supervised environment conducive to learning and professional development.

The Consortium is governed by a Training Committee consisting of one voting representative from each agency and one non-voting intern representative.   The Training Committee elects a director and associate director who oversee the day-to-day business of the Consortium.  The Consortium Training Committee's administrative objectives are to coordinate the selection/admissions process, to provide a stable and supportive administrative structure for intern training, to ensure that training and supervision within the various Consortium agencies are of high quality and congruent with American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines, and to carry out the necessary administrative interaction with APA, APPIC, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Vanderbilt University, and other organizations relevant to the internship.  The Consortium also provides an integrative function across the participating agencies so that interns have the opportunity to interact, discuss clinical issues, and learn from one another.  This interaction, among a substantial number of interns with varied interests and training backgrounds, can be a very intellectually rewarding, emotionally enjoyable and supportive aspect of the consortium internship.

The by-laws by which the Consortium operates, including policies on Benefits and Leave, Supervision, Grievance Procedures, Probation and Termination and the Evaluation Process are available on this website.  Applicants should expect the internship workload to range from 40 to 50 hours a week.  You are urged to discuss this issue with the current year's intern's if/when you come to interview, as they will have the current, most accurate knowledge of this issue.  Please be aware that workload will vary somewhat from week to week, from site to site and within the VA from rotation to rotation. There is also some variance due to intern-specific factors such as experience in report writing.

Although the content of training experiences across the Consortium agencies is quite diverse, the training program is conceptually grounded in a modified version of the scientist-practitioner model of the profession first articulated at the Boulder Conference (1949).  The modification is that active involvement in research is not required of Consortium interns; however, training in clinical techniques across the Consortium is presented in relation to the framework of science that underpins clinical practice.  Most of the supervisors in the Consortium were trained through the scientist-practitioner model and the internship is located in an academic/medical center setting which offers the opportunity for involvement in research for interns who wish it.

The Consortium agencies also share agreed upon training goals and objectives.  Interns come into the program as advanced graduate students.  Our primary goal is to provide the experience, training, supervision, support, and guidance interns need to make the transition from student to journeyman professional, able to function competently, autonomously, and with confidence in a variety of clinical settings.

Flowing from this goal is the commitment to provide sufficient breadth of training across the traditional areas of psychological practice to allow graduates of the internship to move comfortably into a variety of clinical settings, while at the same time providing the flexibility for interns to pursue specialized interests and to gain experience in more innovative areas of practice.  Training experiences and objectives are therefore structured to ensure that each intern will achieve the necessary level of competence in the basic core of assessment, intervention, and consultative skills expected of all professional psychologists while still allowing room for specialization.  The opportunity to work in two or more of the participating agencies during the year helps to provide both breadth and depth of experience.

Additional objectives of the Consortium’s training program are to foster professional development, and to foster comfort in working relationships with other professional disciplines.  Our location in a major university/medical center complex facilitates progress toward these objectives.  Throughout the Consortium psychologists interact with a wide range of other clinical disciplines, including anesthesiology, audiology, dietetics, nursing, education, health care administration, medicine, neurology, physical therapy, psychiatry, social work, speech therapy, surgery, and vocational rehabilitation.  The focus on training and education in the Vanderbilt community leads to the existence of numerous learning opportunities not directly sponsored by the Consortium.  Participation in professionally relevant seminars, rounds, workshops, and meetings on a local, state, regional and national level is encouraged.

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