Pre-Doctoral Residency in Professional Psychology

To provide the range of experiences necessary to attain the goals and objectives of the residency program, residents are involved in an average of 13 hours of direct service contact per week. These contacts may involve a variety of services, such as:

Intake and Crisis Intervention: Residents receive exposure to intake and crisis intervention.

Individual Counselling: Individual counselling involves providing short-term and long-term therapy for clients with a variety of presenting issues. 

Psychological Assessment: Residents receive referrals for assessments from the Student Accessibility Services office, University Health Service or the community. Psychoeducational assessments predominate, although psycho-diagnostic assessments are also available.

Career Counselling and Assessment: Residents will engage in a variety of career counselling activities. Residents gain experience working with career and student development theories, a variety of career counselling interventions (including the use of career assessment tools) and career information resources. Residents are expected to co-facilitate and later facilitate interpretation sessions for the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and the Strong Interest Inventory. It is expected a portion of residents' caseload will be career cases/career related.

Groups and Workshops: Residents are expected to co-facilitate and/or facilitate groups during the year. The topics of the groups vary from year to year and may include issues related to self-esteem, depression, anxiety and relationships.

Practicum Supervision: Residents will be primary supervisor for a practicum student and will receive supervision of their supervision.

Outreach and Consultation: Residents will have opportunities to provide developmental and preventive programming to various segments of the university community. Residents will be able to develop new programs in an area of special interest or to offer some of the general programs, such as stress management, dealing with exam anxiety, or academic success skills.

Supervision: Because of the diverse service offerings, residents participate in a variety of individual and group supervisory experiences. Over the course of the year, a minimum of four hours per week is provided by Doctoral Level Registered Psychologists (3 hours individual supervision; 1 hour group supervision) with overall supervision frequently surpassing 4 hours per week.

Individual supervision

• Individual supervision is provided by doctoral-level registered psychologists (minimum of three hours per week).
• Assessment supervision is provided by doctoral-level registered psychologists (amount of supervision varies based on student need to become proficient in administration, and writing of six integrated assessment reports).
• Specialty supervision (e.g., on groups) is provided by Doctoral Level Registered Psychologists and at times by other agency professional staff. Wherever possible, supervision by a doctoral-level registered psychologist is sought (variable supervision time based on experience).
• In addition, consultation on selected cases is available from professional staff members. 

Group supervision

• Assessment supervision is provided by doctoral-level registered psychologists
• Supervision training provided by a doctoral-level registered psychologist, includes reviewing literature and supervision of supervision (one and a half hours bi-weekly).
• Director of Training supervision is provided by the director of residency training – doctoral level registered psychologist (two days during initial orientation, one and a half hours weekly for the first month of residency; one and a half hours monthly during the remainder of residency).
• Career supervision is provided by a professional staff member which includes an initial training orientation followed by regular supervision meetings (initially one and one half hours per week, and faded to one and one half hours every other week).

Diversity Training is facilitated by Student Counselling Centre (SCC) staff.

Resident Professional Development Seminars are provided by Student Counselling Centre (SCC) staff and external presenters (weekly for the first four weeks and bi-weekly thereafter) 

Staff Case Conference Meetings: Presentations by SCC staff and trainees that provide educational information and training in a variety of clinical areas and professional issues.

Client Consultations: Residents participate in weekly Consultation and Professional Practice meetings with the other professional staff, to review requests of clients presenting for service and consult on client related concerns.

Psychiatric Consultation: Residents are able to refer clients to a consulting psychiatrist for second opinions regarding clients’ issues.

Professional Development: Our residency provides residents with four hours per week of professional development time, which residents may use for dissertation or other research, professional reading and/or writing, attendance at conferences or workshops, or specialized service activities.

Administration and Staff Development:  Residents are encouraged to participate actively in all aspects of departmental life, including membership on various committees. Residents also present at Staff Case Conference meetings and may also provide other staff development programming.

We believe that our training model and program structure offer the combination of diversity, flexibility, and quality experiences necessary to help us attain our primary training goal, which is to prepare residents for the independent practice of professional psychology in diverse settings, including counselling services and other academic, clinical, and community settings. To operationalize this goal, a number of education and training objectives have been identified and are included in the evaluation forms. A summary of the main objectives for each of the areas is provided below:

1)  Intervention Competency

1. Ability to integrate historical, developmental, contextual, and diagnostic information into a case conceptualization that guides ongoing work
2. Ability to adapt conceptualizations over time as new information emerges
3. Ability to link conceptualization to relevant theory
4. Ability to productively engage clients in intake and counselling
5. Ability to maintain rapport over time
6. Ability to identify the links among theory, research, and practice (e.g., interventions have a grounding in theory and support through the literature)
7. Ability to identify and implement different intervention strategies as appropriate to different presenting problems or contexts
8. Ability to demonstrate proficiency with a wide range of intervention modalities representing different theoretical traditions (e.g., behaviour therapy; client-centered therapy; systemic approaches)
9. Ability to identify and utilize empirically-validated treatments where appropriate (e.g., cognitive-behavioural therapy for panic disorder)
10. Ability to effectively identify and utilize process or interpersonal variables during intervention
11. Ability to work effectively with both short-term and long-term cases
12. Ability to terminate therapy with clients successfully
13. Ability to identify and respond effectively to crises or behavioural emergencies
14. Ability to effectively lead or co-lead psycho-educational or therapy groups

2)  Career Counselling Competency

1. Career Counselling skills include ability to conceptualize the career planning difficulties of students using a variety of theoretical perspectives, ability to engage in productive career counseling and the ability to consult with other career service providers as needed
2. Career Counselling Knowledge includes demonstrating an understanding of career development theory, the complexity of career issues for university students, and available career inventories and services 
3. General Counselling Skills include demonstrating an understanding of developmental theories and issues, and an ability to integrate general counselling skills in interventions with career clients
4. Group Leadership Skills include abilities to communicate information clearly and to facilitate group dynamics

3)  Assessment Competency

1. Ability to effectively collect and utilize interview, collateral, and historical data in assessment process
2. Ability to effectively formulate differential diagnoses from interview or test data
3. Ability to select a battery of test instruments that effectively address the referral question(s)
4. Ability to competently administer, score, and interpret results of testing
5. Ability to produce integrative written reports addressing the referral question(s), make useful  recommendations, and provide timely and useful feedback to clients and referral sources

4)  Diversity Competency

1. Ability to demonstrate awareness of ethnicity, culture, and other issues of diversity as significant parameters in understanding psychological processes
2. Ability to educate clients about North American psychological intervention processes
3. Ability to demonstrate respect for social structures, values, and beliefs within the client’s culture or context
4. Ability to consider the impact of adverse social and environmental factors in assessing problems and designing interventions
5. Ability to identify and work to eliminate biases, prejudices, and discriminatory practices in self
6. Ability to demonstrate skills in adapting interventions to diverse group

5)  Consultation Competency

1. Ability to identify programming needs in the community and design and deliver outreach programmes to effectively address these needs
2. Ability to solicit feedback from clients about the effectiveness of the consultation process and address concerns if the results are not satisfactory

6)  Professional Conduct Competency

1. Ability to demonstrate respect toward clients, peers, colleagues, supervisors, and other members of the university community or public with whom the intern interacts
2. Ability to demonstrate a working knowledge and effective application of the ethical code of the Canadian Psychological Association
3. Ability to demonstrate knowledge of relevant university policies and provincial guidelines/laws as they pertain to practice issues (e.g., confidentiality; informed consent; duty to warn; duty to protect; child abuse reporting)
4. Ability to demonstrate openness to learning and to access supervision and consultations appropriately
5. Ability to maintain relevant standards with respect to documentation of professional services         
6. Ability to demonstrate sound professional practice by acknowledging own limits of competence    
7. Ability to demonstrate awareness of transfer-of-skill issues and how to apply skills across service setting and populations
8. Ability to recognize psychology as an empirical discipline and appropriately access literature and collect data

7)  Supervision of Practicum Students

1. Demonstration of knowledge of supervision models
2. Ability to form an effective supervisory alliance
3. Ability to adjust supervision to supervisee needs and developmental level
4. Demonstration of a balance between supervisee development and client care in supervision
5. Provision of ongoing feedback to supervisee
6. Ability to articulate a model of own supervisory style