Clinical Activities & Supervision

The clinical environment at Hurley Medical Center provides for advanced learning experiences. First-year fellows typically have 15-25 hours of patient contact per week, providing targeted assessments, interventions, and real-world practice. In many circumstances, fellows - with input from their supervisors - can select cases that will best enhance their knowledge base, providing a wide-ranging learning experience. Fellows learn evicence-based practice and how to develop and monitor appropriate treatment plans.

Main clinical activities include:

• Inpatient consultations
  • Typically requires the fellow to: respond within 24 hours of request, evaluate patient at bedside, write notes as required by Hurley standards, formally communicate with the referring physician.
• Psychological Testing
  • Conduct psychological, neuropsychological, and cognitive assessments. May include determining necessity/appropriateness of testing for a given patient, with guidance from supervisors.
• Outpatient Neuropsychological and Cognitive Testing
  • A fellow usually completes 20-30 outpatient evaluations during the first year and 30-45 evaluations during the second year. Completion of at least 50 outpatient evaluations is normally required to graduate in good standing from the Rehabilitation Psychology Fellowship. First-year fellows typically see one outpatient neuropsychology testing case every other week. Fellows are expected to complete their report within 1 week of the assessment and have 5 days to revise (per supervisor’s feedback), if needed.
  • Many clinical activities include one-on-one teaching/supervision from the supervisor. For example:
• Individual Supervision
  • Fellows have a least two hours of individual, face-to-face supervision each week, plus two or more supervisors during any one training year. Supervision occurs in multiple settings, such as durin rounds.. on the floor during patient-care activities, via phone, email, text-messaging, outpatient office, and other contexts.
• Patient-Care Rounds
  • The fellow participates weekly in patient-care rounds with hospital-based psychologists, exposing the fellow to patient-care coordination and discussions about clinical issues with deep educational value. Supervisors often conduct group discussions on educational topics that arise during clinical care.

Didactic Training

The fellowship provides a robust rehabilitation psychology curriculum, along with many elective seminars and activities to deepen knowledge and skills, while preparing fellows for a long and successful career in rehabilitation psychology.

• Weekly rehabilitation health psychology seminars*
• Professional development, leadership, and management seminars*
• Adult medical seminars (e.g., noon conferences, grand rounds; morbidity, mortality and improvement; tumor board)*
• Graduate Medical Education Combined Lectures (e.g., professionalism, wellness, cultural sensitivity, corporate compliance, confidentiality, risk management, health disparities, population health, quality and patient safety)*
• Trauma conference
• Psychopharmacology
• Hospital-wide committee participation (e.g., ethics, diversity and inclusion council)
• Book chapter review and journal club

*Required educational experiences

Teaching Activities

In addition to clinical activity, involvement in medical education is also a minor emphasis of the fellowship.

• Teaching, instruction, and shadowing of medical residents and medical students
• Formal didactic instruction to peers, medical residents and medical students on topics related to rehabilitation psychology, psychological testing, and neuropsychological and cognitive testing
• Community outreach
• Supervision of practicum students
• Curriculum development

Scholarly Activities

The program requires one scholarly project during the entire fellowship period. However, overall, the program ensures readiness for participation in a range of scholarly activities. It also promotes a scholarly approach to rehabilitation psychology practice through a robust educational curriculum. For those with more interest in scholarly activity, a variety of opportunities are available, with considerable support provided from fellowship faculty, an on-site library, and a dedicated research department at Hurley Medical Center.

Scholarly activities available for fellows include the following:

• Collaborative research studies
• Quality improvement projects
• Program evaluation
• Participation and eventual authorship of peer-reviewed works including posters, oral presentations, and journal articles