Practicum Sites
Cherokee Health System
Cherokee Health System serves residents of the Lakeway region of East Tennessee. Through its main office in Knoxville and satellite clinics located throughout its service area, Cherokee provides a comprehensive array of clinical, consultative, and community support services as well as medical treatment and integrative care. Outpatient behavioral services include individual, family and group therapy, day treatment, and pharmacotherapy. Cherokee also provides a broad spectrum of evaluative services, including psychodiagnostic, forensic, psycho-educational, and vocational assessment. A strong commitment to influencing the psychological sophistication of the region is reflected in various programs of consultation and education offered to schools, physicians, business and industry, the courts, and other community agencies. Cherokee staff are licensed and certified by the State of Tennessee and national professional organizations. Training at Cherokee consists of supervised involvement in all phases of Center services appropriate to the specific training needs of each student. Clients are adults, adolescents and children, and the intervention strategies range from cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, family systems, and interpersonal. They also are part of multi-disciplinary treatment teams.
Peninsula Village
Peninsula Village offers inpatient intensive treatment in a family style psychiatric setting. The Village program is a long term (6-12 months), highly structured residential program for emotionally troubled adolescents who have not been successful in other treatment settings. Training at the Village uses both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral approaches where appropriate. Clinical students on placement at the Village gain experience in milieu therapy as well as more specific individual and formal group process interventions and in psychological assessment.
Ridgeview Psychiatric Hospital and Center
Ridgeview Psychiatric Hospital and Center is a comprehensive treatment facility offering inpatient and outpatient care as well as day care, emergency, and consultation and education services. The Center is psychodynamically oriented and treats an extremely wide variety of pathology. Students on placement with the Center gain experience working across all services offered and with all age groups seen. Formally scheduled in-service programs, in addition to regularly scheduled and "as needed" supervision, are part of the practicum experience. Master’s level competency is encouraged.
University of Tennessee Medical Center Emergency and Trauma Department (UT-ER)
University of Tennessee Medical Center Emergency and Trauma Department (UT-ER). The core of the ER placement is UT Hospital's Emergency and Trauma Department (the only Level-1 ER in the region). Work in the ER is intense, challenging, and richly multidisciplinary. Placement students work everywhere in the ER, including the helicopter trauma bay. Students attend to the acute emotional upheaval associated with sudden death of a family member(s), disfiguring burns, head injuries, life-threatening consequences of chronic disease, and severe psychiatric syndromes of all kinds. In addition, as part of an interdisciplinary team, students provide outpatient psychotherapy (short and long-term), behavioral medicine, and family interventions services to ER patients and to patients referred by some units and floors throughout the hospital. There is ample opportunity to work with child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric patients. Some students attend neurology rounds and neurological surgery procedures. Students with advanced therapeutic skills are preferred for this placement. Students share on-call responsibilities 24-7, and receive supervision by two licensed clinical psychologists.
Cornerstone of Recovery
Cornerstone of Recovery is a residential substance abuse treatment hospital that treats adult patients from across the country. Students at Cornerstone gain experience conducting family therapy sessions, facilitating group therapy sessions, participating in interdisciplinary treatment team meetings, and administering comprehensive structured intake interviews and other assessment procedures. Cornerstone’s treatment philosophy integrates Jeffrey Young’s cognitive-behaviorally based Schema Therapy with a traditional AA/NA model. They also utilize family therapy techniques and appropriate psychopharmacological treatments.
By the time these experiences occur, students have had two years of doctoral study which includes a year of supervised clinical practicum in our Psychological Clinic, plus two years of supervised research experience. Thus, most students are ready to see patients and clients in off campus settings or to serve as instructors in undergraduate courses (Introductory, Abnormal, Child, and Social Psychology). The five off-campus clinical placement sites all offer supervision by licensed clinical psychologists, and the teaching practicum is supervised by clinical and experimental program faculty who have taught the relevant courses (this practicum has a prerequisite seminar in college teaching).
Participating agencies have a strong training mission, as evidenced by their willingness to provide supervision, regular feedback on student performance, and financial support (an agency typically does not completely recoup its costs through capitation contracts). Based on the supervisor’s written feedback (twice per year), there is a consistent basis for faculty reviews of the student’s experience. While each student’s transition from the second year campus clinic practicum (i.e., comprehensive assessment and both long and short-term psychotherapy) to the real world of managed care is usually awkward at first, most quickly gain breadth in their assessment and intervention skills. When students are ready to leave for internship, they appear to be comfortable in most clinical settings and seem to have reasonably well thought out views of their professional identities.