Jim - Yes, well put. My primary concern, which you've explained well, is that
the increasingly common practice among clinical Ph.D. programs of accepting
only students who wish to pursue academic/research careers may inadvertently
widen the already wide science-practice gap. Clinically oriented students who
are scientifically minded or at least open to scientific approaches (and yes,
many such students do exist) will instead go largely to Psy.D. programs where,
as Jim notes, they will typically receive training that is not scientifically
rigorous (there are a few honorable exceptions among Psy.D. programs, like
Rutgers, Argosy in DC, and perhaps Denver, as Annette observes, but in my
experience these are outliers).
An argument I've made in my own clinical program, with minimal success, is
that our field desperately needs scientiifically-minded practitioners to
deliver evidence-based interventions, serve as scientific role models for their
fellow clinicians, supervise graduate students in scientifically-grounded
assessment and treatment techniques, offer continuing education workshops that
integrate science with practice, and so on. I very much worry that the current
trend of discouraging scientifically-minded students who aspire to practice
careers from applying to clinical Ph.D. programs will deprive the field of
practitioners who have received high quality scientific training.
But at the risk of being cynical, most of my academic colleagues here and
at other research-oriented clinical psychology programs are less concerned
about the future of the field at large than with the success of their own
research activities. That's where the reinforcement contigencies lie. These
faculty members want research-oriented students to staff and run their
laboratories and help them with their grant-funded research, so the current
admissions system works well for them. But we may pay a price in the long run.
.....Scott
________________________________________
From: Jim Clark [[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:30 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: RE: [tips] Clinical training: Boulder and Denver
Hi
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
[email protected]
>>> "Lilienfeld, Scott O" <[email protected]> 11-Sep-11 7:36:26 AM >>>
But more and more, Boulder model programs are discouraging students with
primary career interests in clinical practice from applying for graduate
school, largely because dozens and dozens of Psy.D programs are already
available to do that (and there's no research evidence that Ph.D.s are
associated with superior therapy outcomes to Psy.D.s). Also, the costs of
graduate training at most clinical psychology programs are enormous (e.g., at
Emory, we fund offer guaranteed funding for 4 years, with full tuition
remissiion, about a $17,000 a year stipend, coverage of health insurance and
other fees; and our clinical program is not markedly atypical from other
clinical Ph.D. programs), and many graduate programs do not want to invest
>$100,000 and years of research training in a student who will go out and
perform full-time therapy, especially when there is no evidence (and pretty
good evidence to the contrary from meta-analyses) that their treatment outcomes
will be superior to those of B.A. level paraprofessionals (I have decidedly
mixed feelings about this argument, but take it for what it is).
JC
One potential downside to this division is that it would appear to give up on
the possibility that in the future psychological practice might have stronger
scientific foundations that require a deeper understanding of human behavior
and experience than can be transmitted in an undergraduate degree or even in a
PsyD (especially as currently constituted). It is hard to draw complete
parallels with other professions that do not have PhDs as the top professional
degree, but MDs do differ from Nurses, Dentists differ from Dental Hygenists,
and so on. Psychological practice based on an undergraduate degree would
appear to place psychology on par with Social Workers and Occupational
Therapists. And the shortcomings in the current versions of PsyDs, as alluded
to by Scott, means perhaps that PsyDs are not a lot better than undergraduate
degrees (my interpretation, not necessarily Scott's).
Another problem is that we relinquish training of practitioners to institutions
that are generally less completely scientific than university psychology
departments and that are probably outright anti-scientific in some cases. What
does that augur for the future interface between the Clinical Scientists and
Practitioners? To again draw an analogy with Medicine, would the results of
research in the medical field be less likely to be disseminated and adopted
widely if the researchers were not trained initially as practitioners? Indeed,
it even seems at least unusual to think of, for example, a Prostate Cancer
research centre that was not headed by a medical practitioner and that did not
also serve as a primary treatment centre.
Take care
Jim
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