Psychologists Collaborating With Clergy

If a patient adheres to religious values and practices, should the treating psychologist get input from a clergyperson? How frequent is clergy-psychologist collaboration? What obstacles impede such collaboration? An exploratory survey questionnaire was sent to 200 clergy, 200 psychologists interested in religious issues, and 200 psychologists selected without regard to religious interests or values. Four themes were assessed: types of collaborative activities, frequency of collaboration, obstacles to collaboration, and ways to enhance collaboration. Strategies for promoting clergy-psychologist collaboration include challenging unidirectional referral assumptions, building trust through proximity and familiarity, and considering the importance of shared values and beliefs

Development of a management practicum in a clinical psychology program

Some clinical psychology programs are developing training in management in response to both the recognition that management is a major professional role for many psychologists (Clements, Rickard, & Kleinot, 1986) and the National Council of Schools of Professional Psychology’s (NCSPP) inclusion of “supervision and management” as one of six competency areas for the core curriculum in professional psychology (Peterson, R. L., McHolland, J. D., Bent, R. J., Davis-Russell, E., Edwall, G. E., Polite, K., Singer, D. L., & Stricker, G., 1991). At the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology at George Fox University (Newberg, OR), we developed a management practicum to facilitate specific and advanced training of selected doctoral students in this competency area. In this article, we compare and contrast our program with the one developed at West Virginia University (WVU), described in a previous article in this journal

A Practical Model for Teaching Supervision Through Vertically Integrated Teams

Teaching supervision is a relatively new practice and training area (Schindler and Talen, 1996). This paper describes a method of teaching clinical supervision to graduate students in clinical psychology. The method involves an intensive seminar, assigned readings, and a year long supervised practicum in providing supervision. Students in the first through fourth years of a doctoral program are assigned to a team with a faculty leader. The faculty member oversees the professional development of all students on the team. Additionally, the fourth year students oversee the first and second year students under the supervision of the faculty member. This method facilitates the initial development of supervisory skills in students prior to their internship. Training in supervision is thought to be important because many psychologists function as supervisors and the demand for supervision by clinical psychologists may be rising with current changes in the health care delivery system

Whole-exome sequencing in the differential diagnosis of primary adrenal insufficiency in children

Adrenal insufficiency is a rare, but potentially fatal medical condition. In children, the cause is most commonly congenital and in recent years a growing number of causative gene mutations have been identified resulting in a myriad of syndromes that share adrenal insufficiency as one of the main characteristics. The evolution of adrenal insufficiency is dependent on the variant and the particular gene affected, meaning that rapid and accurate diagnosis is imperative for effective treatment of the patient. Common practice is for candidate genes to be sequenced individually, which is a time-consuming process and complicated by overlapping clinical phenotypes. However, with the availability, and increasing cost effectiveness of whole-exome sequencing, there is the potential for this to become a powerful diagnostic tool. Here, we report the results of whole-exome sequencing of 43 patients referred to us with a diagnosis of familial glucocorticoid deficiency (FGD) who were mutation negative for MC2R, MRAP, and STAR the most commonly mutated genes in FGD. WES provided a rapid genetic diagnosis in 17/43 sequenced patients, for the remaining 60% the gene defect may be within intronic/regulatory regions not covered by WES or may be in gene(s) representing novel etiologies. The diagnosis of isolated or familial glucocorticoid deficiency was only confirmed in 3 of the 17 patients, other genetic diagnoses were adrenal hypo- and hyperplasia, Triple A, and autoimmune polyendocrinopathy syndrome type I, emphasizing both the difficulty of phenotypically distinguishing between disorders of PAI and the utility of WES as a tool to achieve thi

Market and Mission

The focus of this article is how the market forces in the field of professional psychology affect the Christian training programs. After a brief review of some of the changes in the field over the past three decades, current national and Christian community trends are presented. Although market forces affect the manner in which the Christian training programs move forward, they do not change the mission of these programs. The mission has not been accomplished. Therefore, the task of training Christian professional psychologists continues. </jats:p

The Efficacy of a Brief Behavioral Health Intervention for Managing High Utilization of ED Services by Chronic Pain Patients

Patients with chronic pain continue to seek medical care from emergency departments nationwide despite the fact that an emergency department is a less-than-optimal environment for meeting their specific and specialized needs. As the scientific community has gained a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic pain, the central role of psychological factors have emerged. Therefore, an ED-based, behavioral health intervention for chronic pain patients is needed to better serve this population and to help hospitals provide cost effective treatment at the appropriate level of care

The Role of Spirituality and the Impact on Social Responsibility

Research on social responsibility shows that community and social organizations play an important role in developing social responsibility. Religious groups comprise a considerable number of community and social organizations. The present study explored the impact of spirituality on social responsibility and assumed a positive correlation. Measures included a demographic questionnaire with questions about religious affiliation and social service, the Social Responsibility Scale (Starrett, 1996) which measures global social responsibility and social activism, the Religious Orientation Scale (ROS) by Allport and Ross (1967) which measures Intrinsic (I) and Extrinsic (E) religious orientation, and the Quest scale (Q) by Batson and Schoenrade (1991) which measures religious searching . Data were gathered from student volunteers. Results indicated that GFU students generally reported that they were Christian, intrinsically oriented, and attended religious services at least once a week. Reed students generally reported they were atheist/agnostic, were extrinsically oriented, and attended religious services less than three times per year. On the Starrett scale, GFU students indicated they were more socially conservative and were more likely to focus social service on individuals, while Reed students were more likely to focus on global and institutional expressions of social service. The two groups were similar on Quest and on Traditional Values and Fatalistic Indifference. The groups also showed similar levels of giving and volunteering. Two distinct patterns of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related to social service emerged. One is characterized by Christian commitment, intrinsic religious orientation, high religious participation, and social service focused on individuals. The second is characterized by atheism/agnosticism, extrinsic religious orientation, low religious participation, and social service focused globally and on institutional change. The original goal of identifying three patterns of spirituality and social service was partly successful

Training in the Use of Psychotherapy Outcome Assessment Measures at Psychology Internship Sites

American Psychological Association accredited psychology internship training programs (N = 407) were surveyed concerning their attitudes, beliefs, and practices with regard to outcome assessment measures. Results indicated that 47% of surveyed sites use outcome measures for assessment, and 66% used these measures for diagnostic purposes. In addition, 79% of respondents supported using outcome assessment measures to evaluate client progress, 61% supported training interns in the use of outcome assessment measures, and 87% felt outcome assessment measures would increase in importance in the future. The discrepancy between support for outcome assessment measures and actual use is discussed and recommendations provided

The Charlotte (TM) intra-vehicular robot

NASA has identified telerobotics and telescience as essential technologies to reduce the crew extra-vehicular activity (EVA) and intra-vehicular activity (IVA) workloads. Under this project, we are developing and flight testing a novel IVA robot to relieve the crew of tedious and routine tasks. Through ground telerobotic control of this robot, we will enable ground researchers to routinely interact with experiments in space. Our approach is to develop an IVA robot system incrementally by employing a series of flight tests with increasing complexity. This approach has the advantages of providing an early IVA capability that can assist the crew, demonstrate capabilities that ground researchers can be confident of in planning for future experiments, and allow incremental refinement of system capabilities and insertion of new technology. In parallel with this approach to flight testing, we seek to establish ground test beds, in which the requirements of payload experimenters can be further investigated. In 1993 we reviewed manifested SpaceHab experiments and defined IVA robot requirements to assist in their operation. We also examined previous IVA robot designs and assessed them against flight requirements. We rejected previous design concepts on the basis of threat to crew safety, operability, and maintainability. Based on this insight, we developed an entirely new concept for IVA robotics, the CHARLOTTE robot system. Ground based testing of a prototype version of the system has already proven its ability to perform most common tasks demanded of the crew, including operation of switches, buttons, knobs, dials, and performing video surveys of experiments and switch panels