Internship Structure

Although a wide variety of training experiences are available within the Consortium, any single intern’s experience will be limited to a few sites that are congruent with the intern’s training objectives. On Uniform Notification Day, applicants are matched with a particular primary placement in one of the agencies described in “Agencies and Rotations” section. Each Consortium intern devotes three and one half days per week to clinical training and supervision at this primary placement. It is, therefore, very important to review carefully the descriptions of the Consortium agencies to decide which agency/agencies you would consider for potential primary placement based on your training interests

Each intern will spend one day a week at a secondary placement, which must be at a site different from the primary placement. Selection of a secondary placement takes place after the beginning of the internship year and plays no role in acceptance decisions (see "Secondary Rotations").

The following examples may help to illustrate some of the possible ways in which interns’ time could be distributed. Intern A, with a primary placement at the Psychological and Counseling Center and a secondary placement at Adult Psychiatry would spend all day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon at the Psychological and Counseling Center (PCC), Thursday at Adult Psychiatry (AP), and Friday morning in Consortium Training activities. Intern B, with a primary placement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (C&A) and a secondary placement at the Nashville VA would spend all day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon at Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Thursday at the Nashville VA and Friday morning in Consortium training activities.

Didactics

All Consortium interns attend regularly scheduled case conferences and didactic seminars that are organized as part of the internship experience. These mandatory consortium-wide training activities occupy approximately one half day each week, currently on Friday mornings. In addition to the presentation of clinically or professionally relevant content, a major objective of these Consortium-wide training activities is to provide a structure within which members of the intern class may interact and learn from one another. There is also an abundance of conferences, colloquia, workshops, and research opportunities open to interns in the Consortium settings, in the larger university community, and the Nashville area. Participation in some of these activities can be arranged through negotiation with your training site, and will serve to enrich the internship year and provide a setting for valuable interaction with other professionals.

Research

All interns are required to participate in Research Symposium Day which takes place in late June near the end of the training year. The overall goal of this requirement is grounded in the Consortium’s scientist-practitioner model of training, and provides an alternative avenue to analyze, synthesize and present the science that underpins clinical practice. With that in mind, the expectation is that each intern will present a topic of scholarly and scientific research in an interest area of their choosing. This requirement can be met in several ways. Interns can choose to complete a unique research or quality improvement project in collaboration with a faculty member on-site during the training year. Interns can also choose to present their previous or ongoing research, with emphasis on demonstrating the clinical relevance of their findings. This may include work related to their dissertation. A case study highlighting and incorporating the relevant research literature would also suffice. Presentations are 10-15 minutes in length, and have historically been in poster format. Other audio-visual aids such as handouts and/or power point slides can also be utilized to supplement the oral presentation.