Doctoral Internship – Fremont

We are committed to nurturing and integrating diversity training into all aspects of our doctoral internship by:

• Providing interns with opportunities to work with diverse patients who represent various aspects of diversity, including age, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, values, and lifestyle
• Placing a high value on interns’ willingness to engage in self-reflection and learning and supporting the exploration of attitudes, beliefs, and therapeutic postures that could have a negative impact on clinical interactions
• Maintaining a consistent focus in clinical supervision on expanding interns’ multicultural awareness and competence in the provision of psychotherapeutic services and by providing guidance, suggestions, and resources on topics related to diversity
• Providing formal in-person or online training on diversity topics such as discovering and mitigating unconscious bias, respecting every voice, and cultivating a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace
• Encouraging interns to participate in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Mental Health Training Program Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee’s advanced trainings on topics related to cultural sensitivity and competence alongside a forum to reflect on and discuss their varied experiences in a safe environment

Regularly scheduled weekly didactic seminars are organized and administered by the Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) Mental Health Training Program. Interns are required to attend the two-hour weekly seminar, which focuses on aspects of clinical practice that the interns may not regularly encounter.

Diversity issues are always integrated into seminar presentations. Seminar topics include Frontiers in Trauma Treatment; Advanced Risk Assessment; Updates in Substance Abuse Research & Treatment; Advancements in Psychopharmacology; Cognitive Processing Therapy; Technology and Mental Health; Trans/Nonbinary Mental Health; Building a Better Brain through Exercise, Nutrition, Sleep and Stress Management; and Self-Compassion.

The KPNC Mental Health Training Program also sponsors professional training courses for continuing professional development. These courses and presentations are offered at select times during the year for all KPNC mental health trainees and medical center staff. The KPNC Mental Health Training Program brings in national experts and keynote speakers on a variety of cutting-edge topics in mental health treatment and research. Interns are expected to attend all MHTP Speaker Series seminars. Current seminar schedules and a list of speakers and topics can be found on the KPNC Mental Health Training Programs website. In addition, many of these lectures are recorded and available on this website under the Continuing Education Seminar Library.

Doctoral interns will rotate between Child and Adult Team staff meetings each month, as well as attend the Department wide meeting each quarter. Individual and group supervision utilizes components of feedback informed care for case consultation.

All doctoral interns are supervised by licensed psychologists and are assigned to a primary and secondary supervisor. These two clinical supervisors meet with their assigned intern one hour per week for individual face-to-face supervision, for a total of two hours of individual supervision per week. The primary and secondary supervisor in each training track is responsible for supervising the direct delivery of clinical services. The primary supervisor takes the lead role in developing the intern’s learning plan, monitoring their progress, and evaluating their training schedule. The primary supervisor is also responsible for supervising the intern’s clinical work and completing quarterly evaluations after gathering input from the other delegated supervisors and staff who have worked with the intern.

Doctoral interns are also provided with one hour of clinical group supervision and one hour of group supervision for psychological assessment each week. As part of the Silicon Valley Consortium, interns at the Fremont Doctoral Internship site participate in group supervision coordinated at the consortium level. Interns at all three Silicon Valley Consortium sites are split into two sections for both clinical and assessment group supervision; having two of each type of group supervision creates sections that range in size from 6-7 interns, which aims to provide balance between opportunities for intern participation and opportunities for intern interaction.

During clinical group supervision, interns learn how to conceptualize treatment plans and frame interventions through a cultural framework that considers age, gender identity, race and ethnicity, family systems, socioeconomic status, work and school history, and other cultural factors. Interns also gain experience presenting clinical cases, as well as giving and receiving peer feedback; these feedback interactions help interns to develop collegial and supervisory aspects of their professional identities as psychologists. During assessment group supervision, interns have an opportunity to discuss several aspects of the assessment process, including how to interpret test results, formulate clinical impressions, and plan patient feedback.

Reflecting Kaiser Permanente’s core commitment to mental health and wellness in our communities, each doctoral intern will spend at least 32 hours during their training year on a Community Partnership Project that focuses on improving mental health in the local community beyond Kaiser Permanente patient membership. The Community Partnership Project is coordinated at the consortium level, and interns at the Fremont Doctoral Internship site join interns from the other consortium sites to learn about and plan for their projects.

The goal of this project is to provide outreach to underserved populations in the community to promote healthy behaviors. Anchors for this project include developing alliances with individuals and/or systems to improve the lives of those served; providing education and training based on the empirical literature; collecting, analyzing, and presenting relevant outcome data to partnership stakeholders.

The scope and focus of the projects reflect the unique opportunities available in each community to develop meaningful partnerships. Projects are developed in conjunction with guidance from consortium training faculty and can take a wide range of forms. Many Community Partnership Projects entail psychoeducational programs at local high schools or community centers, with emphasis in such areas as mindfulness, stress reduction, parenting education, anger management, or communication trainings. Other projects have involved staff consultation at county or non-profit agencies (e.g., homeless shelters, community mental health clinics, prisons, etc.).

All doctoral interns complete psychological testing as part of the internship training program. During the training year, interns further their knowledge about test battery design, administration of various tests and measures, interpretation and integration of test results, and communication of test results. Opportunities exist for interns to develop proficiency in both child and adult assessments.

A minimum of two assessments a year are required but there are opportunities to conduct more as well as expand the complexity of the assessment battery based on the intern’s experience, interest, and clinical need. Interns primarily receive assessment supervision in group format with additional modalities for support available as needed. A 6-month rotation in ADHD screening for children is also available. This rotation consists of running a weekly ADHD assessment group and supporting the administrative needs of the service.

At the beginning of the training year, the site training director works with each doctoral intern to determine which research-based training activity they will engage in over the course of the training year. Interns may choose to collaborate with local department staff to develop a site-specific program evaluation project, collaborate on a program evaluation project with the MHTP Evaluation and Quality Improvement Lab (EQI Lab), or join the MHTP Journal Club.

• Site-Specific Program Evaluation: projects are focused on existing clinic service lines, treatment programs, or patient care workflows and should fall within the regular scope of departmental services. Projects may involve collecting and analyzing administrative data to improve operations, or they may be a quality improvement/assurance project whose purpose is to improve or assess existing Kaiser Permanente programs or procedures (e.g., evaluation of factors associated with treatment outcomes or an empirical needs assessment of a clinical area that would be enriched by psychological services). Interns meet regularly with training faculty over the course of the training year to review progress on their projects.
• MHTP EQI Lab Program Evaluation: projects are guided by quality improvement goals that extend beyond local, site-specific programs. Projects may focus on outcomes of training program models, the impact of MHTP specialty training, the effectiveness of MHTP-sponsored treatment programs, or the incorporation of outcomes measures into clinic workflows. The EQI Lab holds weekly, 1-hour meetings throughout the training year to coordinate MHTP program evaluation projects and monitor progress. During these weekly lab meetings, interns receive consultation from MHTP clinical supervisors to ensure that their projects are relevant to current clinical work, integrated into clinical care, and appropriate for dissemination.
• MHTP Journal Club: research training consists of reviewing and critically evaluating research within a select subfield of psychology and developing a didactic tool for other clinicians to use to augment their clinical practice during the delivery of services within KP Mental Health. The primary expectation for interns in the Journal Club is to prepare brief presentations that take place during the last month of each quarter. The Journal Club holds monthly, 1-hour meetings in addition to weekly presentations during the last month of every quarter.

This position offers doctoral interns the opportunity to work on a close-knit multidisciplinary treatment team offering evidence based, focused and multimodal treatment to children, teens, and their families.

The Pediatric doctoral intern training will complete a rotation in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), completing ADHD and ASD screenings/assessment, assisting with Eating Disorder cases, as well as providing other evidence-based psychotherapy, groups and classes.  Doctoral interns will also have the opportunity to co-facilitate a variety of treatment groups, including Teen Mood Skills, Teen Anxiety, and groups for younger children such as Child Anxiety.  Rotations will be determined based on skills, interest, and availability.

Doctoral interns are assigned cases from the broad and diverse pediatric patient population addressing needs related to the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, attention and impulse control disorders, behavioral issues, and more.

The doctoral intern will utilize evidence-based interventions within a feedback informed care model with the use of outcome monitoring at each session. Training in evidence-based group treatment will consist of co-facilitating groups under the supervision of licensed therapists. Training in evidence-based individual treatment will consist of providing individual therapy in a focused-therapy model, and will include feedback-informed care, CBT, DBT, and ACT interventions.

This is a 12-month rotation on the Adult Mental Health service team with a 6-month rotation in BMS (approximately 2-days 16-20 hours/week) as well as Group Education and Skill Building Intensive (may include our 12-week DBT intensive and or 8-week anxiety and depression groups). Interns are assigned cases from the broad and diverse patient population in the clinic and will address needs related to the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, attention and impulse control disorders, trauma, aging, adjustment, work or life stress, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, eating disorders, and more. Interns will evaluate and diagnose mental health conditions based on DSM-5 and ICD-10 criteria, develop treatment plans and learn how to articulate those plans to their patients in a concise and confident manner.  Doctoral interns will utilize evidence-based interventions within a feedback informed care model including the use of outcomes monitoring at each session. Training in evidence-based individual and family treatment will consist of providing therapy within a focused treatment model. Training in evidence-based group therapy will consist of co-facilitating groups and classes under the supervision of licensed therapists including ADHD, Adult Depression and Anxiety, and Work stress.

Track Name: Behavioral Medicine Services BMS Provides mental health service embedded in Primary Care Medical Clinics, such as Adult Family Medicine (AFM). Distinguishing BMS from a typical Psychiatry/Mental health clinic, we are frequently on-site in our medical clinic, seeing patients by appointment in-office and virtually (on video), taking same-day referrals when needed, taking WHO’s (Warm Handoffs) from physicians, and serving as the mental health expert on the multidisciplinary team. We begin our interventions immediately, during the initial appointment, we intervene with insight and recommendations, psychoeducation, and many other approaches, depending on the nature of the problem, as opposed to the traditional therapy role, where we allow time for the relationship to develop, etc. We in BMS are true generalists, in that we see the largest diversity of stressors among any of our mental health colleagues. Our members are typically experiencing mild-moderate distress, and by jumping in early, in more of a consultant role, BMS providers help people get better very quickly. We have 30–40-minute sessions, seeing members for up to 5 sessions, but the majority of our members only see us for 1-2 sessions, as they get better very quickly.

Rotation Name: Skills and Education Groups

Interns have the opportunity to be trained in our highly popular and effective group programming by co-facilitating skills and education groups with staff members. We host DBT Orientation (2 hours) and DBT Skill Group Classes (12 weeks). In addition, we provide Group Education classes to help manage Depression and Anxiety in the format of virtual group series (8 weeks). Interns have the opportunity to provide education and skills related to improving symptoms and quality of life for our patients. They will learn invaluable skills for group management and teaching to a varied audience as well as experience the joy that comes with rapid improvement.