Training Philosophy and Model

The philosophy of our program is scientist-practitioner.  We endorse the view that good clinical practice is based on the science of psychology.  In turn, the science of psychology is enhanced by the experience of working with real patients.  As a consequence, our approach to training encourages clinical practice that is empirically supported and consistent with the current state of scientific knowledge.  At the same time, we acknowledge the complexity of real patients and the limitations of our empirical base.  While implementing scientifically validated treatments, we respect the uniqueness of individual patients and base our clinical decisions on a sequence of hypothesis testing.  Our aim is to produce psychologists who are also capable of contributing to the profession by investigating clinically relevant questions through research.  While individual interns may ultimately develop careers that emphasize one aspect of the scientist-practitioner model more than the other, our expectation is that clinicians will practice from a scientific basis and that scientists will practice with a clinical sensibility and relevance.

Our program embraces a generalist training approach, based on the view that a psychologist must be broadly competent before becoming a specialist.  We believe that interns are best trained by developing their generalist skills across a spectrum of clinical areas.  This is accomplished through various didactic and professional seminars and deliberate case assignments that gradually expand interns' repertoire of skills.  Supervisors will be identified as mentors and role models who are accomplished in the areas of emphasis selected by the interns.  The training model for the pre-doctoral training program at the Iowa City VAMC, therefore, has four key components: (1) empirically-supported practice, (2) self-guided learning through mentorship, (3) clinically informed research, and (4) broad-based training with increasing depth.