General Health Psychology Rotation

The General Health Psychology Rotation focuses on the delivery of psychological services in interdisciplinary health care settings.  Training is offered in many inpatient and outpatient medical settings spread across all VA and MCG/AU hospitals and clinics and the MCG/AU Children’s Hospital of Georgia. This rotation focuses on acquiring a knowledge base that will enable the psychology interns to apply fundamental psychological principles to health care settings with a goal of training interns to function independently in interdisciplinary health care settings. This rotation focuses on the following competencies:

• Interns must quickly and effectively identify patients’ psychological concerns within the context of various medical settings.
• As a component of integrated approaches to health care issues, Interns must be able to integrate various sources of information when assessing patients, including a brief clinical interview, screening measures, and medical information.
• Interns must be able to recognize and clarify psychological factors that affect medical care and effectively brings these factors to the attention of the medical team.
• Interns must be able to communicate, both verbally and in written format, with medical team members to enhance patient care.
• Interns must recognize each team member’s role and work with all team member to promote excellent patient care when addressing psychological and other medical issues.
• Interns must help the team create and implement treatment plans that meet patients’ psychological and medical needs.
• Interns must be able to develop/enhance and implement an effective liaison program psychological and medical needs.
• Interns must be able to apply treatment strategies in medical settings as noted by:
• Identifies and applies brief interventions that are appropriate to medical settings and address the consultation question.
• Clearly and concisely documents interventions in a way that promotes effective interdisciplinary care.
• Effectively addresses a range of issues that typically present in medical settings, such as poor health behaviors, stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Flexibly applies interventions to a range of diverse patients to meet their individual needs.

Interns will develop these skills through placements in different clinics or hospital settings in both the VA hospital and the Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University.  Each intern typically works in 5-6 different settings during the rotation.  Selected experiences include multiple integrated health care settings including such choices as: (1) MCG/AU services - Adult Infectious Disease Clinic (HIV/AIDS),  Adult Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service, Bariatric Clinic, Cancer Center, feeding disorders program, Pediatric Endocrinology - diabetes, Pediatric GI Clinic; (2) VA Services - Blind Rehabilitation Inpatient Unit, Chronic Pain Program, inpatient  medical rehabilitation units, primary care clinics, Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Unit, and the TBI Polytrauma Evaluation Clinic.  Additional options may be added to this list depending on circumstances.