Academic & Research Activities

As an academic medical center, Montefiore Einstein’s mission is to heal, teach, discover and advance the health of our communities. While our internship deliberately places the heaviest emphasis on clinical service (“to heal”), we intentionally balance this with training and education (“to teach”) and research (“to discover”). Some examples of our commitment to leading and educating include our intense and thorough clinical supervision, a full day of didactics each week (Thursdays), recurring case conferences and a weekly Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds (from September through June) that features renowned presenters from across the nation. In addition, interns must complete a research project during their internship year. The faculty also frequently invites them to participate in additional scholarly projects, such as papers, contributing chapters to published studies and conference presentations.

The Psychology Internship Training Program places a heavy emphasis on supervision. On average, interns in all four of our specializations receive between five and seven hours of supervision per week, with three to four individual supervision hours and two to three hours of group or dyadic supervision.

The Psychology Internship Training Program faculty are experts in a range of theoretical approaches (e.g. cognitive behavioral therapy—CBT, dialectical behavior therapy—DBT, psychodynamic psychotherapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, etc.) and modalities (e.g. individual, couples, family systems and group). In addition, interns participate in weekly multidisciplinary treatment teams, take turns presenting an ethical dilemma during our monthly Division of Psychology meeting and attend a monthly “On Becoming a Supervisor” meeting run by our five postdoctoral fellows. Finally, depending on an intern’s rotation and supervisor, supervision may involve the audio recording and/or videotaping of sessions, review of progress notes and being observed and/or engaging in co-therapy.

The department uses Thursday as its training and education day. As such, all interns attend lectures from 9:00 am to 10:15 am and from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm for the duration of the training year. Some of these lectures are conjointly attended by psychiatry residents, fellows and psychology externs. The curriculum, which is presented by members of the faculty as well as other select invitees, is organized around various modules that are directly connected to our goals and objectives, including several lectures on culture and diversity, as well as special topics of importance to new health service psychologists.

Interns must also attend the Department of Psychiatry Grand Rounds series each Thursday from September through June between 10:30 am and 12 pm. This series frequently features distinguished invited speakers from across the nation who present on various timely topics in psychiatry and psychology. Most speakers agree to stay for a private lunch with the trainees immediately following Grand Rounds and occasionally stay after lunch to teach a mini-workshop for the interns in place of the usually scheduled afternoon didactics.

All interns are required to participate in research during the internship year. Many of the faculty at Montefiore Einstein (inside and outside the Department of Psychology) are actively involved in research and willing to supervise psychology interns in their research endeavors.

Outside of the required research, the Psychology Internship Training Program at Montefiore Einstein offers interns a range of scholarly project opportunities. For example, interns may collaborate with faculty on presentations at scientific conferences, be invited to present writing projects (such as book chapters, book reviews and journal articles) or even co-author a book.