The Pre – doctoral Internship Program in Clinical Psychology is designed to provide a diverse range of training activities and experiences for pre– doctoral clinical psychology students. The Mission of the Internship Program is to provide professional growth to the intern in Clinical Psychology, through sequential and didactic training based on a Practitioner Scholar Model within the Psy.D. Program, and Scientist-Practitioner Model for the Ph.D. program. The program training consists of 2,000 hours of Internship training completed in one year (12 months) or two years (24 months).
The Internship Department has two internship program consortiums: San Juan Internship Program in Clinical Psychology Consortium and Carlos Albizu Internship Program Consortium. The Carlos Albizu University provides administrative support to the Consortiums, which is an exclusively affiliated internship to the academic programs (Psy.D. and Ph.D.) at CAU, through the Internship Department.
It is an essential requirement that the students pass doctoral program exams and complete all the academic and clinical requirements for doctoral candidacy at the end of the Fall Session prior to commencing the internship. Students registered for Internship are considered to be full time students. Please see Internship Manual for further information.
The basis of the Internship experience is acquired through the development of the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for doctoral level positions in Psychology and increased supervised training in areas such as psychotherapy, assessment, consultation and psychological evaluation. The program provides a unique opportunity for interns to increase and refine clinical knowledge skills and competencies as they are applied to a culturally diverse group of clients with multiple mental health needs in a variety of clinical settings. The clinical training within a bicultural context such as Puerto Rico provides valuable experiences and opportunities for our interns to translate into clinical wisdom and practice the richness of multicultural awareness.
Interns are supervised by a primary and secondary supervisor who has been a licensed doctoral-level psychologist. All Interns in the Internship Program receive a minimum of four (4) hours of supervision per week with a minimum of two (2) hours being spent in individual, face to face supervision. The Interns receive two (2) hours per week of individual supervision (face-to-face) by a doctoral level licensed clinical psychologist at their particular site(s). Clinical Supervisors (primary supervisor) are clinically and legally responsible for the cases under their supervision. This norm applies for both, Ph.D. and Psy.D. Interns. Prior to the beginning of the Internship year, every Intern must attend a Crisis Intervention Seminar. Participation in this seminar is mandatory. This seminar consists of 36 hours of training and will be conducted by the Director of the Internship Program. A core curriculum of seminar and Intern case presentations are provided where all Interns meet together on Tuesdays two hours (2 hours) per week irrespective of their particular clinical site placement. Interns will also be expected to present cases throughout the year.
