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Postdoctoral Psychology Residency

Psychology Programs

 Multi-specialty Pediatric Psychology Postdoctoral Residency (Fellowship) at Phoenix Children’s Hospital 

The Pediatric Psychology program at Phoenix Children's Hospital is pleased to announce a one-year postdoctoral fellowship/residency in pediatric psychology for the 2023-2024 academic year. 

The aim of the Pediatric Psychology Residency (Fellowship) program is to improve child health outcomes by providing excellent postdoctoral training that will enable graduates to excel in practice with children, adolescents, and families in a medical setting.  Education is vital to our vision. To facilitate that vision, our program is a member of the Arizona Psychology Training Consortium (AzPTC, https://www.azptc.org/)

Our faculty and trainees serve a broad range of medical specialties across the hospital and clinics. Postdoctoral residents/fellows will devote a substantial portion of their time to clinical experience working under the supervision of licensed clinical psychologists across a variety of pediatric psychology subspecialties, with a particular focus on pain along with a selection of the subspecialities that will be listed below.

Clinical Experiences:

At least 40% of the fellow / resident’s time will be spent in direct service.

Primary experience: (30-50% of supervised experience):

Pain Service, which serves a wide range of populations including but not limited to:

  • Headaches, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS)/hypermobility syndrome, abdominal pain, fibromyalgia/amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome, sports injury.
    • Conduct new patient intakes in the outpatient Comprehensive Pain Clinic
    • Provide follow-up care in the 8-week WRAPP (Weekly Rehabilitation and Pain Program)
    • Follow patients from the Pain Clinic for outpatient psychotherapy.  
    • Possible opportunities for inpatient consultation-liaison or inpatient/outpatient rehabilitation with patients experiencing acute and chronic pain

Secondary experience(s): (a partial selection of these experiences based on the schedule, availability, as well as interest of the postdoctoral candidate can make up 30-50% of supervised experience):

Cystic Fibrosis (CF):

  • Adult CF Clinic and/or the Pediatric CF Clinic
  • New patient intakes, and outpatient individual therapy with the option to focus more on certain age ranges and/or issues  
  • Cases present with a full spectrum of issues, including depression, anxiety, feeding issues, non-adherence, and managing school/ job/relationships
  • Developing and conducting groups for patients and families will also be an option. 
  • Presenting for CF Family Education Days and other similar activities is also available. 

Gastroenterology (GI) clinics:

  • Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Clinic
    • Multidisciplinary clinic
    • Follow-up services to address pain and/or adherence – most often needle phobia is the barrier
  • Feeding Clinic
    • Multidisciplinary clinic evaluations
    • Intensive feeding therapy follow-ups
  • General GI cases for evaluation and follow-up

Neurology clinics:

  • Complex Headache Clinic (CHC)
    • Multidisciplinary intake evaluations
  • Ketogenic Diet clinic
    • Multidisciplinary intake evaluations

Inpatient Consultation & Liaison:

  • Heart transplant evaluations
  • Eating disorder assessment and treatment

Exposure experiences (<20% of supervised experience):

Required:
On-call Service:

  • Participate 6 to 8 times per year (with a faculty member) in the weekend on-call service to the medical floors (rarely in the Emergency Department).

Optional:
Outpatient Therapy cases

  • Additional outpatient therapy with medical patients with co-occurring emotional/behavioral problems. 

Advocacy Project:
Develop mentored expertise in social media, providing media interviews, producing blog and vlog posts.  

  • Purpose of this project is to promote psychological science in ways that are easily understandable to the general public.

Additional expectations:
Umbrella Supervision:

  • Resident will take on a peer supervision role for the current pediatric psychology intern and/or practicum student(s).  
  • Supervision for the patients will ultimately be the responsibility of a licensed clinical psychologist on staff.  
  • Bilingual (Spanish-English) supervision is available for bilingual candidates. 

Didactics:
As part of the Arizona Psychology Training Consortium (AzPTC):

  • Required to attend regularly scheduled monthly didactic training two days per month at various sites with other consortium members

As part of PCH:

  • Postdoc Seminar about 1x/2 months; Pediatric Psychology Didactics 1x/week

Optional experience:
In addition, there may be opportunities for scholarly inquiry and quality improvement projects.   

 

 

 

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