Overview

A core clinical experience for interns is the consultation/liaison (C/L) service, which serves all inpatients at Phoenix Children’s. Consults commonly come from divisions such as Neurology, Endocrinology and Cardiology and address concerns including diagnostic clarification (e.g., functional disorders, disordered eating), safety evaluations, coping with chronic illness and hospitalization, medical adherence, delirium, behavioral challenges, pain management and quality of life. Working alongside C/L psychologists, interns provide brief assessments and intervention with patients and families, attend rounds and patient care conferences and collaborate with medical teams and staff.

Interns gain integrated care experience through multidisciplinary clinic (MDC) rotations, working alongside physicians, nurses, dietitians, rehabilitation therapists and other specialists to address the psychosocial factors that shape medical outcomes. Rotation options often include Cancer and Blood Disorders (including sickle cell disease), Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Healthy Living, Ketogenic Diet, Headache, Spina Bifida and Pain. Across clinics, interns conduct targeted health, behavioral and neurocognitive screenings and evaluations and provide brief, evidence-based interventions for concerns such as treatment adherence, procedure-related anxiety, pain coping, dietary compliance and family stress. Several rotations also offer follow-up outpatient care or program development experience.

Interns provide outpatient therapy, from intake through treatment, for emotional and behavioral concerns such as anxiety, depression and trauma, often in the context of neurodevelopmental and medical conditions. Treatment is short-term and goal-focused, drawing on evidence-based approaches including motivational interviewing, behavior therapy, CBT, ACT, DBT and transdiagnostic interventions.

Single session intervention (SSI) appointments are brief, one-time outpatient consults for a community pediatric population. In each visit, interns assess presenting concerns, offer practical strategies families can use at home and provide next steps such as recommendations and referrals. Rotation builds skill in quickly identifying primary concerns and fitting interventions while helping families feel heard, validated and empowered. Interns see a wide range of ages, family contexts and concerns, including toileting, ADHD symptoms, anxiety, depression, trauma, developmental delays, school advocacy and screening for psychological testing.

Interns complete at least four comprehensive outpatient evaluations for youth with ongoing medical conditions, typically addressing learning concerns and ADHD. Referrals are screened first through a single session intervention visit. Interns carry cases from start to finish - diagnostic intake, test administration, scoring, interpretation, report writing and feedback with families.

Interns are supervised by licensed psychologists who hold professional responsibility for intern cases. Because the internship spans multiple clinical experiences, interns typically have a different supervisor for each, gaining exposure to a range of orientations, styles and subspecialty expertise. Interns receive more than the required four hours of supervision weekly, blending live and traditional formats. Within two weeks of starting a rotation, intern and supervisor develop a Supervision Contract and individualized Training Plan setting shared expectations, goals and benchmarks; for year-long major rotations, the plan is revised at six months. There may be opportunities for tiered supervision of junior trainees.

Interns attend at least two hours per week of structured didactics aligned with APA’s Profession-Wide Competencies including assessment and diagnosis, evidence-based interventions, ethical and legal standards, cultural and individual diversity, supervision and consultation, research and program evaluation, interdisciplinary collaboration and professional development. To better enable interns to care for patients of diverse cultural and individual backgrounds, seminars regularly integrate topics including cultural awareness and humility, social drivers of health and caring for unique patient populations.

Group Consultation is a weekly one-hour meeting for trainees at all levels, facilitated by rotating psychologists. The primary goal is to build clinical skill and professional identity through topics that cut across settings, including cultural responsiveness, ethical and legal considerations, professional development and reflective practice in supervision.

Interns complete at least four mentored presentations: an ethics-focused case conference, a cultural sensitivity–focused case conference, a didactic or case conference on a topic of their choice and a Neuroscience Grand Rounds presentation. Each is mentored by the case supervisor or a psychologist familiar with the topic and interns receive verbal and written feedback from their mentor and attending psychologists.

Interns are assigned a professional mentor who is a psychologist not serving in a supervisory role. Interns and mentors meet for 1 hour once per month. The Professional Mentor relationship is collaborative, non-evaluative and designed to provide trainees with a supportive professional relationship focused on career development, professional identity formation and long-term professional growth.