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PAU-Stanford PsyD: Practicum

The PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium is a practitioner-scholar program in which supervised clinical experience is an integral component of doctoral training. The Consortium provides extensive practicum experience for doctoral students in diverse clinical settings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Consortium is primarily generalist in approach, but students have the opportunity to build their chosen specialties by training in varied practicum settings. The program takes a developmental approach to practicum training, whereby clinical placements progress from supplemental, to foundational, intermediate, and finally advanced.

Students are introduced to practica in their first year and are required to successfully complete three full years of practicum in a community setting during their second, third, and fourth years, for approximately 2000 total hours prior to pre-doctoral internship.

First Year: Supplemental Practicum

Students can begin supplemental practica in their first year and continue to complete them throughout their time in the program. The supplemental placements serve as an introduction to clinical experience and are heavily focused on basic therapeutic skills such as diagnostic interviewing, brief assessments, brief interventions, and cofacilitation of psychotherapy groups.

Students typically commit to a 6–12 month placement, 4–10 hours per week. Frequently, these experiences occur within the context of a clinical research project at Stanford University Psychiatry Department. As a result, students have the opportunity to choose among projects utilizing a wide range of assessment and intervention techniques examining diverse clinical presentations.

As an added bonus, supplemental placements may secondarily lead to research opportunities, which help to facilitate the dissertation process.

Second Year: Foundational Practicum

During the second year, students complete their first full year practicum placement at one of the Consortium’s captive training sites. The Consortium is dedicated to excellence in clinical training and has established several university-affiliated captive clinical training sites for second year students to complete their foundational practicum. The captive sites focus on providing students with a strong foundation in evidence-based psychotherapies.

The Community Clinic @ PAU
The Community Clinic is a community-based, low-fee mental health clinic affiliated with Palo Alto University. It is dedicated to providing high-quality, evidence-based clinical services to adults, couples, and families. The patient population is culturally and ethnically diverse and spans the age range.

Training is organized to familiarize students with basic therapeutic skills and focuses on the application of evidence-based and manualized treatments (e.g., CBT, ACT, MBCT, EFT). Direct provision of services includes completion of intake interviews, conducting individual psychotherapy, couples psychotherapy, treatment planning, coordination with community providers, and referral services.

Sexual and Gender Identities Clinic (SGIC)
SGIC is a specialty clinic affiliated with Palo Alto University. It offers psychological services for individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, as well as those questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Common presenting problems include confusion or conflict about sexual or gender identity, relationship concerns, depression, anxiety, weight and body image concerns, and trauma. Students gain intensive clinical training related to working with sexual and gender minority clients.

La Clinica Latina
PAU has established a Latinx specialty clinic to provide Spanish-language services for the Latino/a community. Student therapists are trained to conduct both individual and group psychotherapy and assessment in Spanish using evidence-based, culturally-appropriate interventions under supervision of a licensed psychologist.

These students will receive specialized training through individual and group supervision with bilingual and bicultural supervisors. In addition, all practicum students and supervisors will have enhanced opportunities to attend didactic trainings on topics relevant to Latinx culture and the use of evidence-based Spanish-language treatment and prevention manuals.

Mental Health Clinic at the Palo Alto VA
The Mental Health Clinic (MHC) at the Palo Alto VA is a Stanford-affiliated training clinic on the Menlo Park campus. It provides high-quality, evidence-based outpatient psychotherapy to Veterans ranging in age from 18–85.

MHC serves individuals with a wide range of psychological, emotional, social, and psychiatric difficulties who are referred from inpatient programs (psychiatry, addiction treatment, PTSD, medical), other outpatient programs, community programs, or self-referral. Students’ responsibilities include diagnostic intake assessments (SCID), weekly individual psychotherapy (CBT, ACT, TLDP), co-facilitation of psychotherapy groups, and work within a multidisciplinary team.

Third & Fourth Year: Intermediate & Advanced Practica

An exciting aspect of the Consortium program is the ability to complete community-based practica at diverse training sites throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning in the third year, students complete their practicum placements at one of approximately 50 approved placements.

The Consortium is a member of the Bay Area Practicum Information Collaborative (BAPIC), a partnership among San Francisco Bay Area doctoral psychology programs and practicum agencies. BAPIC centralizes practicum training information and streamlines the application process. These sites provide students with diverse training opportunities, diagnostic presentations, cultural backgrounds, and theoretical orientations including CBT, DBT, brief dynamic, family systems, and eclectic, multi-systemic approaches.

Both third and fourth year students may complete BAPIC practicum placements. A sampling of popular BAPIC sites among students include:

  • Alameda Health System
  • Bay Area Trauma Recovery Clinic
  • El Camino Health
  • Fremont Hospital
  • Kaiser Permanente Oakland Psychiatry (Child and Family Services)
  • Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Redwood City, Child & Adolescent Team
  • Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Richmond, Adult & Child & Family Team
  • Kaiser Permanente Psychiatry Vallejo & Vacaville
  • Kaiser Permanente Santa Rose Neuropsychology
  • Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco, Mental Health Services
  • Kaiser Permanente Walnut Creek, Mental Health & Addiction Medicine
  • LifeMoves
  • Northeastern University CAPS (formerly Mills College)
  • Psychological Services Center at Edgewood
  • San Jose Job Corps
  • San Jose State University CAPS
  • Santa Clara University CAPS
  • Santa Rosa Junior College
  • Stanford Ronald McDonald House Family Support Services
  • StarVista, San Carlos
  • UCSF - Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital - Department of Pediatrics
  • UCSF Alliance Health Project: Services for the LGBTQ Community
  • UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland - Division of Behavioral Health
  • UCSF Epilepsy and Pediatric Brain Centers
  • UCSF Memory and Aging Center
  • VA Medical Center, San Francisco, Psychology Services (Health Psychology, Women’s Mental Health, Couples and Family, PTSD specialty tracks)
  • VA Northern California HCS East Bay Advanced Psychology

In addition to BAPIC, the Consortium has a longstanding relationship with the Stanford-affiliated Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. Third and fourth year students are also eligible to complete practicum training here. The Palo Alto VA provides patient care across ten hospital/clinic sites, with the majority concentrated in the Palo Alto division.

The training model involves intensive supervision, including observation of videotaped or audiotaped sessions by a senior psychologist. Each student training at a Palo Alto VA site is observed so that supervisory feedback closely matches their developmental level. A sampling of popular Palo Alto VA practicum placements include Addictions, Evidence-Based Telemental Health, Health Psychology, Neuropsychological Assessment and Intervention Clinic, Memory Clinic, and the Psychological Assessment Unit.

Note: The VAPAHCS practicum training placements are not open to students in doctoral programs outside of Palo Alto University, which makes it a unique training opportunity. Lastly, third and fourth year students are also eligible to train at one of our intermediate/advanced captive training sites with Stanford University affiliation. These include the Stanford Psychiatry Inpatient Unit, the Stanford University Faculty and Staff Help Center, the Stanford University School of Medicine–Child Psychiatry, and the East Palo Alto Academy High School/Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

Practicum Forum:
While completing an intermediate or advanced practicum placement, all third and fourth year students also participate in practicum forum. This forum offers students a place to integrate academic readings with clinical experiences from their practicum sites.

Practicum forum also serves as a setting in which students are mentored by a faculty member in a small group setting (typically around ten students per forum group). In the forums, students link their current clinical work to empirical research, and also hear about other students’ clinical experiences.

The academic readings selected for practicum forum are focused on enhancing students’ knowledge of several key competencies: diagnosis/assessment, therapeutic alliance and case conceptualization, empirically supported treatments, cultural issues, ethical and risk management issues, and multidisciplinary professional issues.