The Psychology Internship Program seeks to strengthen interns’ skills in training and consultation, and program development and evaluation. These skills are often ignored in internship training, but strengthening them will expand interns' job options in the rapidly evolving health care market place. Interns are required to collaborate with administrative or supervisory staff or faculty on program evaluation/improvement, outcome measurement, or program development. Projects will be limited in scope and duration, can work in teams with other interns, and the intern’s responsibilities must be clearly outlined and expectations established. Project duration is typically for the full year, and projects must be completed within a one-year time frame.

Projects are typically conducted at clinical sites where the intern is already engaged in supervised clinical work. Such a project will focus on issues of mutual interest to the intern, the intern’s supervisor, and the head of the clinical unit. UBHC places a heavy emphasis on the development of local Performance Improvement Teams as part of its Quality Improvement initiatives, and interns are encouraged to join and contribute to one of those teams and use that activity as their project. Project topics are chosen and developed in collaboration with supervisory staff, and may examine a wide range of issues, e.g., client progress and satisfaction with services, ways to engage families more effectively, service effectiveness and the development of new treatment modalities (such as arts in mental health), coordination among clinical units, referral patterns, linkages to the community, decreasing adverse patient outcomes, and other topics. Interns are required to present the results of their projects at the annual UBHC Performance Improvement fair in May and submit a final written report.

These experiences are designed to supplement the intern’s strong clinical training with training in practice-relevant research methodology. They are also designed to help interns acquire a managerial/administrative perspective on their work, and a better understanding of the health care delivery system. More broadly, the goal is to prepare interns for future leadership roles in health care.