Medical Psychology Clinical Track Program (Page 2)

Program Requirements
 
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Clinical activities

The Program trains psychologists with broad-based clinical knowledge, problem-solving skills, and general clinical skills to address problems related to mental health, physical health and illness, and organizational systems. The program's goal is to train individuals who will conduct medical and clinical psychology research and who will provide care to patients.
 
The Department has access to military and civilian clinical training sites that provide a wide variety of opportunities for practical application of didactic learning and the development of clinical skills, judgment, and experience. Training sites include clinic and hospital settings with potential exposure to child, adolescent, adult, family, outpatient, and inpatient populations. Students also are exposed to organizational consultation. Additional clinical experiences can be arranged for students with specialized interests. Clinical experiences fall into three categories: Practica, Clerkships, and Internship.
 
Practical: Practicum training occurs during the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters of the second, third and fourth years. Students work at practical sites for 6 to 10 hours per week. Practicum training is designed to facilitate:

Practical training is provided by full-time and adjunct clinical faculty primarily at USUHS-affiliated teaching hospitals. The Program also has affiliations with other clinical programs in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area that provide unique training opportunities not available in the existing teaching hospitals. Practica experiences are coordinated and monitored by the Department's resident clinical faculty.
 
Clerkships: Clerkship clinical experiences occur during the summers following the first, second, and third years. Clerkships provide a more extensive clinical experience under close supervision within a service setting for 16 to 24 hours per week. This experience is directly supervised at a minimum of 1 hour per week by a licensed clinical psychologist from the training facility. In our Program, students typically have 1000+ hours of clinical experience prior to internship.
 
Internships. Clinical Psychology students complete the 12-month internship during the sixth or seventh (final) year of the program within an APA-approved clinical psychology training program. The internship is an intensive full-time clinical experience designed to: acclimate the student to the procedures and work load of full-time clinical work; provide intensive clinical supervision and evaluation of clinical conceptualizations and judgments; and prepare the student to operate as an independent professional by the end of internship.

Teaching activities

classroom facilitiesTeaching is an important part of Ph.D. training. It is necessary to prepare those individuals who go on to faculty positions. It is a valuable experience for all students as they communicate what they know to others. It also is an important service to the medical students and other graduate students at USUHS. All graduate students in Clinical Psychology must participate as teaching assistants.
 
seminarMinimally, students are required to assist with at least one course per year during their second and third years of training. Students who want to gain more teaching experience may assist in teaching more than one course a year throughout their years at USUHS. Select, advanced graduate students may gain additional teaching experience by conducting sessions within graduate seminars and lecturing in the medical school.

Research activities

Upon entry into the program, students are required to meet with each faculty member to learn about faculty research interests and opportunities. Students then are matched with a primary advisor by mutual agreement of the student and faculty member, and are expected to become involved in ongoing research. Clinical students may work with Medical or Clinical Psychology faculty members. If a student chooses to work with a Medical Psychology faculty member, then the student also must choose a member of the clinical faculty to act as a clinical advisor. These assignments may be changed throughout graduate training. Students typically work with their advisor on research, but students may do research with faculty other than their primary advisor. In such cases, the advisor continues to monitor student progress, in consultation with the other faculty. Specific research or research-related projects must be conducted at certain points in the program (see below).
 
During the first and second year, students work on the faculty member's research team and complete a research study that is an offshoot of the research advisor's ongoing research program. This experience is designed to teach research skills through a mentoring model. This model includes: identification and conceptualization of a problem area; critical analyses of existing research; hypothesis generation; experimental design; data collection; data analysis; and completion of a manuscript suitable for submission for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
 
Advancement to Ph.D. candidacy typically occurs at the end of the second year, after students meet four milestones: satisfactory completion of the first-year review paper; satisfactory completion of a second-year project (described below); passing of Ph.D. qualifying exams; and passing grades (As or Bs) in 48 credit hours of course work.
 
student activitiesBeginning in the third year, students are expected to identify a research topic (the dissertation) that is relevant to and supports the student's training and interests. Students work closely with the faculty member in the formulation of the research question(s) and design. The dissertation proposal is written and defended during the third year. Dissertation data are collected and written up during the fourth year. The dissertation must be completed before the beginning of internship in the fifth year.
 
1) Second-Year Project: During the second year, students must complete a research project that is required for advancement to candidacy, and which may form the basis of a Master's thesis. This project has three components. First, students develop a research problem, hypotheses, and design under the guidance of the advisor. Second, the student conducts the study and analyzes the data. Third, the student writes the study up in a form suitable for publication. The study may be on any topic in psychology that is agreeable to both student and advisor. The written paper based on this project is reviewed by the faculty member under whose direction the research is conducted.
 
student studying 2) Master's Thesis: The Master's thesis usually is written up at the end of the second year. The write-up of the second year project may be expanded and reformatted to constitute the Master's thesis (according to USUHS guidelines), or a separate project may be conducted that becomes the Master's thesis. The written Master's thesis is reviewed and must be approved by a committee made up of the student's advisor and two other full-time faculty members within the Department.
 
3) Third-Year Project: In the third year of study, each student must complete either 1 of the following 2 writing projects:
 
(a) write a review paper in the style of Psychological Bulletin. The topic, scope, and third year paper must be read and approved by two faculty members within the Department other than the student's major advisor. The topic of this paper must differ substantially from any topics studied to date by the student as part of a faculty member's research program. The purpose of this requirement is to have students select a topic, study the relevant literature, integrate the literature, and prepare an original review, as they will need to do to develop an original doctoral dissertation topic and to develop ideas for original research proposals and programs as a professional scientist. Third-year papers typically range from 30 to 50 pages in length. The third-year paper may form the basis of the literature review for the doctoral dissertation.
 
OR
 
(b) develop and write an individual training grant proposal, adhering strictly to the format of an NIH predoctoral training (F31) grant. This grant proposal will include a literature review and detailed research plan for predoctoral and dissertation research, description of a proposed training plan for the student prior to their dissertation, a statement from the student regarding career goals and plans, and a discussion of postdoctoral research plans. This proposal will be read and approved by the student's advisor and two other faculty members. The student is encouraged to submit this proposal upon completion for competitive review and funding by NIH. If the student elects to write this fellowship proposal, work on this should begin immediately upon completion of the second year project. Information about NIH guidelines for NIH predoctoral fellowship guidelines can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-00-125.html.
 
4) Doctoral dissertation: The doctoral dissertation, begun during the third or fourth year, typically is a study that is initiated, designed, conducted, analyzed, written, and presented by the student. Dissertations are written in a standard format according the USUHS guidelines. Students must critically review relevant literature, formulate a problem, derive testable hypotheses, design a study that would stand up to scientific peer review, analyze and explain results, and place the study in a broader context. The doctoral dissertation first must be proposed in a written document and then defended orally and approved by the doctoral dissertation committee. The dissertation is supervised and evaluated by a committee of at least four, full-time faculty members, including the student's advisor, two other full-time faculty members from the Department, and one full-time faculty member from outside the Department but on the USUHS faculty. The committee can include additional faculty members or relevant scientists or professionals who are not faculty members. The student's advisor cannot serve as the chair of this committee. The chair of the committee must be a tenured faculty member.

Summary of Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree in Clinical Psychology

(1) Completion of at least 144 course credit hours (of which, at least 48 must be graded), including:

(2) Second year research project
 
(3) Ph.D. qualifying examination (end of 2nd year)
 
(4) Master's Thesis
 
(5) Third year paper or grant proposal
 
(6) Dissertation proposal defense and specialty exam
 
(7) Doctoral dissertation, including the written dissertation, oral defense, and public presentation
 
(8) Satisfactory completion of 1200-1400 hours of clinical practica and clerkship training (end of fourth year)
 
(9) Satisfactory completion of 12-month full-time APA approved internship (year 5)

Dissertation Process

The dissertation process involves the following steps:
 
(1) The student selects a doctoral dissertation topic in consultation with a faculty advisor who agrees to supervise the research.
 
(2) A doctoral dissertation committee is formed that includes a chair (a tenured faculty member at USUHS other than the advisor), the advisor, at least two full-time faculty members from the Department other than the advisor (the chair can count), and at least one USUHS faculty member from outside the Department.
 
(3) The student writes a dissertation proposal that includes a statement and justification of the question under study, a review of the relevant literature, hypotheses to be tested, study design and methods, any preliminary or pilot data, data analytic strategy, and bibliography.
 
(4) This written proposal is reviewed for format and inclusion of all sections by the major advisor and by one other member of the doctoral dissertation committee before it is forwarded to all committee members for detailed review of its substance.
 
(5) The entire doctoral dissertation committee reviews the written proposal. Committee members have 2 - 6 weeks to do this work.
 
(6) A meeting of the committee and the student is held that consists of three parts:

(7) The committee decides whether the student passes the specialty examination, whether the proposed doctoral dissertation research may begin with or without changes, and whether an additional meeting needs to be held regarding the specialty examination or research proposal.
 
(8) The student is expected to consult with and update members of the committee periodically during the conduct, analysis, and write-up of the doctoral dissertation research.
 
(9) When data collection is complete, the student analyzes the data and writes up the work, including the results and a discussion of the results.
 
(10) The written dissertation is reviewed by two members of the committee to insure that all parts of the write-up have been completed and that the work is consistent with the proposal.
 
(11) The written dissertation is distributed to all committee members for detailed review.
 
(12) The dissertation committee reconvenes, administers a final oral examination on the dissertation conduct, results, and discussion, and decides whether the work is approved as submitted or with changes. This meeting constitutes the private dissertation defense
 
(13) The student presents a public lecture on the dissertation research. This required lecture constitutes the public dissertation defense.
 
(14) The student completes all required paperwork and deposits the dissertation with the university
 
Note: The Department and University allow an alternative doctoral dissertation format that includes a statement and justification of the topic, relevant background literature, a compendium of a series of studies already conducted, a discussion and synthesis of the findings of the studies, and a bibliography. The student must have played the lead role or a major role in all of the studies that are included in this type of dissertation. The student must follow all of the steps for a doctoral dissertation listed above, except that the collection of data already has occurred. This format is rare, but can be proposed.

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Contact Information

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
4301 Jones Bridge Road
Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4799


Center for Deployment Psychology
Center for Health Disparities