Current Status of Fulltime Internship Training in Counseling Psychology Author:Pei-Chuan Huang, Chia-Hsin Lin, Yin-Pzu Chang
Research Article
In this study, a total of 157 counseling psychology interns were invited to complete a questionnaire. The questionnaire items include types of work involve, time allocation, service targets, types of client problems, and clinical supervision received. The internship experiences among college, community and hospital settings were compared. The results are as the following: (a). On a weekly basis, the average work hours for psychology internsis 33.76 and the average number of work items is 6.5. The work items mainly involve administrative work (12.06 hours/week), direct client services(6.85 hours/week), documentation (4.55 hours/week), and so forth. There are significant agency differences in their time spending in group work, in-service training and administrative tasks. (b). Interns in community and hospital settings have contacts with a wider age range of clients. (c). In terms of clients’problems reported, interns in college settings see more clients with developmental issues while interns in community settings see more clients with traumatic and crisis issues. (d). There is no agency difference in clinical supervision variables except for source of supervisors. Almost all interns in college and community settings receive internal clinical supervision. Forty-two percent of counseling psychology interns in hospital settings have received supplemental clinical supervision from external qualified counseling psychologists. The study also discussed the difference between current status and internship training standards, as well as suggestions for internship system development and future research.