Post-Doctoral Program in Clinical Health Psychology in Primary Care

The University of Massachusetts post-doctoral program in Clinical Health Psychology in Primary Care is a two year program designed to train clinical and counseling psychologists on the following three goals: 1) to deliver culturally competent and evidence-based behavioral health assessments and treatment in primary care settings to underserved, vulnerable, traumatized and chronically ill populations across the lifespan; 2)  use collaborative practice to educate and train family medicine, nurse practitioner residents, and practicing primary care providers to identify and address behavioral health needs of diverse, underserved and vulnerable populations in culturally competent ways; and 3) prepare to be leaders in the development and implementation of programs for patient centered medical homes (PCMH).

The program’s training philosophy and model is based on a supervised experiential approach in which first year post-doctoral fellows are trained in evidence-based clinical health psychology through intensive didactics, clinical observations, clinical supervision, and by training side-by-side with family medicine residents. In the second year, fellows continue their clinical training and supervision, but also begin a more focused experience of learning how to teach and train family medicine residents to recognize behavioral needs and use psychosocial knowledge and behavioral health skills. Fellows also learn to build integrated service programs in a primary care setting and are evaluated in a number of ways, including live observation.  Participants are expected to gain competencies in: 1) clinical health psychology assessment techniques; 2) clinical health psychology and family therapy intervention strategies; 3) conducting effective consultations with physicians; 4) professionalism, communication, effective documentation, and acculturation to the medical environment; 5) healthcare management and administration, including leadership skills; and 6) research skills, particularly in the area of conducting clinical quality improvement initiatives.  By having behavioral health providers as peers in their training, residents can better develop the personal relationships on which collaboration is based. In addition, having family medicine residents as peers in their training helps fellows to develop familiarity with the primary care setting in an environment of support where help with the vagaries of “medical culture” is easily available.