Fellow Training Areas and Rotations - Pediatric Psychology Postdoctoral Fellowships

Pediatric Primary Care Psychologists and fellows provide consultation and intervention to patients and families within the pediatric primary care setting. Patients and families who present to their general pediatrician for sick visits and annual well visits can consult with the Pediatric Primary Care Psychologist about emotional, behavioral, and developmental concerns. The goal of IPPC is the screening and prevention of behavioral health disorders, as well as the promotion of positive health behaviors across the lifespan. IPPC also serves to increase access to and reduce common stigmas associated with behavioral health care in the general population. The Pediatric Primary Care Psychologist is often families’ first encounter with a behavioral health provider, providing more opportunities for psychologists to focus on prevention and early intervention.

In this rotation, fellows will receive consultation requests from the pediatricians, lead initial consultation visits, and provide treatment recommendations. Consultation visits will include screening for developmental delays, academic difficulties, psychosocial stressors, depression, suicidality, anxiety, grief/loss, posttraumatic stress, abuse, adverse childhood experiences, behavior problems, and safety risks. Fellows will gain experience with mandated reporting, suicide prevention, safety planning, and hospitalization. During the consultation visit, fellows will provide families with evidence-based interventions and recommendations tailored to the patient’s presenting problems, psychosocial environment, and cultural context. Fellows will also collaborate with the patient’s primary care physician, family members, school personnel, and other medical or behavioral health providers to promote multidisciplinary care for effective intervention.

Fellows will continue to follow patients by appointment or during future clinic visits to provide prevention or brief-intervention or referral until the patients achieves their treatment goals. Both fellows will carry a caseload of patients for outpatient therapy and parent management support using evidence-based treatment strategies to help patients achieve goals in a time-limited fashion. Fellows can also lead or co-lead groups focused on coping skills or parent management. Brief assessment protocols help quickly diagnose obvious presentations of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to expedite path to treatment. Patients at this clinic range from birth to age 19.

Psychologists provide consultation and intervention to patients with acute, recurrent, or chronic physical illnesses and symptoms. Through integration into medical teams, psychologists work to identify and intervene. We conduct regular screening, consultation, and intervention services around psychosocial factors related to their physical illness or symptoms. This provides support and specialized behavioral health services to patients and families who are having difficulty managing physical symptoms, adapting to chronic/acute medical conditions, or adhering to medical regimens. Pediatricians refer patients from a wide array of subspecialties including Cardiology, Critical Care, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Genetics, Hematology-Oncology, Hospital Medicine, Neurology, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, General and Plastic Surgery, Pulmonology, Orthopedics, and Transplant Services, among others.

Our program allows providers to follow families through their medical treatment and in a variety of settings. The fellows will have the opportunity to provide care to patients in medical specialty clinics, hospitalization, and outpatient psychology services. Fellows will consult with patients and families when in the hospital or presenting to specialty care. They will lead initial and follow-up consultation visits, providing brief assessment, intervention, and treatment planning and recommendations. Fellows will also collaborate with the patient’s hospital or specialty team, consultants, rehabilitation and nutritional services, nursing, case management, and child life to promote multidisciplinary care for effective intervention.

Fellows will have the opportunity to provide outpatient psychotherapy and/or comprehensive assessment with medically complex youth. Fellows will carry a caseload of patients for outpatient therapy using evidence-based treatment strategies to help patients achieve their goals. Fellows have opportunity to co-lead groups focused on coping with chronic illness and somatic symptoms.

Focused experiences in specific illness populations are available through multi-disciplinary clinics and targeted outpatient therapy caseload in pediatric gastroenterology, endocrinology, liver transplant, hematology and oncology, and somatic symptom disorders.