Major and Minor Rotations

A.F. Williams Family Medicine Center is a primary training site for Family Medicine residents as well as clinical pharmacy students, nurse practitioner students, physician assistant students, psychology graduate students, and medical students. Our multidisciplinary team also includes care managers, a social worker, and tele-psychiatry consultants. This provides numerous opportunities for psychology interns to work collaboratively on a multidisciplinary team.

The overarching goal of the primary care psychology major rotation is to train psychologists to provide a full range of clinical primary care psychology services as key members of multi-disciplinary healthcare teams, develop an array of interprofessional competencies, and become leaders in this growing area of healthcare. Specific goals include developing core competencies of primary care psychology such as providing consultations to patients and providers, participating in multidisciplinary care teams, providing brief individual therapy services, becoming skilled with warm hand offs and co-consultations, providing diagnostic clarification and brief assessment, providing in-patient consultation, providing group interventions, and assisting with population-based care initiatives. We provide many opportunities for interns to become familiar with the varied roles that psychologists can have in medical education.

Interns will engage in the provision of primary care psychology services in collaboration with attending psychologists, family physicians, psychiatrists, care managers, psychiatric nurse practitioners, physician assistants, RN’s, MAs, social workers, medical students, residents, graduate psychology students, and pharmacy students. These services may include:

1. Consultation regarding behavioral health questions and presenting problems 
2. Consulting with physicians about patient care, mental health and health behavior change
3. Provision of team based care
4. Teaching and supporting patient self-management skills
5. Facilitation of health-related support groups
6. Individual patient assessment and intervention
7. Health promotion/disease prevention interventions
8. Psychological screening and assessments
9. Opportunities to supervise psychology practicum students and engage in supervision of supervision

Interns will contribute to the education and training of medical students and medical residents via:

1. Collaborative care/clinical teaching
2. Small group teaching
3. Coaching physicians in techniques of health behavior change
4. Medical precepting (supervision of psychosocial aspects of medical care)
5. Hospital rounds
   

Interns may potentially participate in ongoing research and/or program development in community based medicine with options including:

1. Serving on grant writing teams
2. Participation in clinical home visits
3. Participation in practice based research working groups
4. Focal study of a selected underserved population

Interns will master a primary care psychology curriculum through:

1. Direct patient care in the primary care setting
2. Selected readings
3. Attending lecture and seminar series
4. Participation in medical school education activities, including Family Medicine, Rural Health and Psychiatry Grand Rounds
5. Participation in daily supervision

Interns will work collaboratively with family medicine residents and attending providers within a consultation-liaison structure to best care for patients during in-patient hospitalizations. In particular, services such as mental health screening, brief mental health interventions, health behavior change interventions, family meetings, and discharge plans are engaged effectively in this team format. Interns will observe these interactions, act independently, and receive supervision during this learning experience. In patient experience can be up to two 1/2 days per week (Tuesday and Thursday afternoons).

The rotation supervisors are well versed in evidence-based approaches to interventions in primary care, medical specialty, and traditional mental health settings. Trainees can expect to gain exposure to and expertise in behavioral activation, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and health behavior change assessment and intervention.

Our patient population includes insured and underinsured patients from a large variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. It also includes refugees from Africa, Iraq, Iran, Russia and South East Asia, medical students, residents, and medical school faculty.

The interns will receive a minimum of 3 hours of supervision per week, inclusive of individual supervision, group and precepting. Some of this supervision is individual and some will be completed as part of a precepting model where you will have the opportunity to work with supervisors with patients individually and learn from how they work and then discuss approaches to best serve those patients before and after encounters.

Professional disciplines represented at JFK include developmental pediatrics, child psychiatry, clinical psychology, social work, speech and language pathology, occupational therapy, and special education. JFK Partners is affiliated with Developmental Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Colorado and all clinical work is completed within Developmental Pediatrics.

JFK Partners is also actively involved with community agencies to address the needs of persons with IDD. Faculty at JFK Partners hold appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics.

The JFK Partners Autism and Developmental Disabilities Clinic, a component of Developmental Pediatrics/JFK Partners, provides a variety of interdisciplinary clinical services to persons of all ages. The Clinic provides a full range of clinical services, including disciplinary and interdisciplinary evaluations, consultation, therapies, and clinical research activities.

JFK Partners is a university based interdisciplinary training program with a commitment to the following goals for psychology trainees:

1. Teach trainees about the needs and strengths of persons with IDD  and their families.
2. Teach trainees a variety of specialized clinical skills for supporting persons with IDD , including psychological assessment, psychotherapy and consultation.
3. Teach trainees to work in an integrated fashion with members of an interdisciplinary clinical team.
4. Foster development of leadership skills and scholarly activities related to the field of IDD.
5. Introduce trainees to values involving inclusion, family and individually centered care, health equity, advocacy, and self-determination for persons with IDD.

Objectives:

1. The psychology intern will learn to administer (or gain mastery with) a variety of cognitive, academic and adaptive assessments for individuals with IDD, including ASD (ages 15 months – 21 years).  
2. The psychology intern will learn to administer (or gain mastery with) gold standard autism assessment measures with individuals aged 15 months–21 years.   
3. The psychology intern will apply the basic tenets of evidence-based interventions to:
   1. Design teaching and educational strategies for persons with IDD to develop new skills
   2. Focus on strengths of the individual and how to best capitalize on these abilities as a means of forging positive social connection and supporting school and community participation
4. The psychology intern will learn to assess the complex co-occurring psychiatric needs of individuals with ASD/IDD, as well as deliver evidence-based interventions (individual, group, and family).
5. The intern will receive training on Facing Your Fears – a CBT group therapy program for managing anxiety in children with ASD, The psychology intern will co-facilitate  a Facing Your Fears group for autistic youth without intellectual disability (ages 8-14) and a research group of Facing You Fears adapted for autistic teens with intellectual disabilities (ages 12-18). The psychology intern will work on an interdisciplinary team with members from other disciplines, including occupational therapy and speech/language pathology, and child psychiatry to evaluate and treat persons with IDD, and to provide comprehensive oral and written feedback to family members. The psychology intern will support residents from the Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry to gain knowledge around Autism evaluations while rotating through the interdisciplinary team in addition to collaborating with the resident on interview skills for the assessment of mental health conditions
6. The psychology intern will complete a scholarly project in collaboration with a supervisor on a topic related to ASD/IDD.

Facing Your Fears (CBT group intervention for treating anxiety in youth with ASD): The intern will co-facilitate at least one Facing Your Fears group.​​

Monthly Developmental Pediatrics Research Didactic seminar focused on conducting research related to IDD. This group also generates ideas for new research projects and presents findings from ongoing projects.

Monthly discussion/meetings within the wider Developmental Pediatrics clinic in which recent research projects/contributions to the literature are discussed.

Core LEND curriculum focusing on the assessment and treatment of ASD/IDD. This coursework is required for some trainees, but not for psychology interns. Some specialty topics and presentations may be of particular interest to interns (e.g. Sensory and Motor Interventions; Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine; Sleep Disorders in Children with Special Needs, etc.) and are available for interns to join.

Monthly ADOS reliability meetings within the Developmental Pediatrics community.

There are a variety of seminars, courses, and lectures provided by the UCEDD as a whole and available to any of the trainees. While some courses are required for interns (e.g., Key Concepts, Leadership Dialogues) as part of the LEND training program, other course are optional (see optional activities tab).

We use a mix of theoretical approaches, including cognitive-behavioral, developmental, and family systems theoretical orientations. Additionally, a major philosophy of JFK Partners is to promote culturally responsive, family focused interventions in inclusive settings. Each intern also becomes familiar with positive behavioral approaches for growth and change.

• Interdisciplinary and disciplinary diagnostic services
• Positive behavioral methods for skill building and behavior management
• Cognitive/behavioral therapy (individual and group-based)

The people referred to JFK Partners are of all ages, from infancy to adulthood, with a diagnosis (or a question of a diagnosis) of a developmental disability. There is a focus on diagnosis and treatment of people with autism spectrum disorder. JFK Partners serves people with IDD throughout the Rocky Mountain region, both urban and rural settings, with a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds and with varying access to social and economic resources.

The intern receives supervision for all clinical activities, including psychological assessment and psychotherapy  Two. psychology faculty members are on site at JFK Partners (Drs. Judy Reaven and Audrey Blakeley-Smith) and three psychology faculty members are on site within Developmental Pediatrics (Drs. Lisa Hayutin, Lindsey DeVries, and Caitlin Middleton).

Assessment supervision is shared by several primary faculty supervisors (Drs. Judy Reaven and Audrey Blakeley-Smith). The intern will be supervised for 6 months by each of these supervisors. Supervision for assessments averages 1 ½ - 2 hours per evaluation, not including live supervision during the assessment itself. Supervision covers preparation for the assessment, review and interpretation of data, and written and oral reporting in addition to live support in co-administration of certain assessments.

Psychotherapy supervision is generally provided by one supervisor for the entire year, 1 hour per week. Live supervision is an important components of the supervision and faculty may observe telehealth sessions lives as well.  Each intern may participate in a psychotherapy group supervision (e.g., Facing Your Fears). Finally, interns are also able to help support the supervision of psychology externs on the team.

Interns will be trained in the Reaching HOPE Family Trauma Recovery therapy model, a phase-based approach for treating complex trauma in family systems. Interns will join a dynamic group of psychologists who tackle intergenerational trauma with a team approach—the whole family system is seen by the whole treatment team (everyone with their own individual therapist). Interns will provide individual, family, 
and group therapy to clients (ages 2-75+). Family and group therapy sessions are co-led with other team members. In addition to providing individual and family therapy to clients with complex trauma, interns will have the opportunity to provide services to frontline workers with the Adams County Department of Human Services, the District Attorney’s Office, and the Health Department. Using components of our phased based approach to treatment, interns will work with these frontline workers to address pre-existing trauma and develop skills that promote resilience and symptom reduction related to vicarious trauma and burnout. 

Reaching HOPE is a 501(c)3 non-profit located in Thornton whose mission is to provide compassionate mental health services that support trauma survivors in ending the intergenerational cycle of violence. Clients are typically referred to Reaching HOPE by police departments, victim advocates, child advocacy centers, and human services after a crime has occurred. Reaching HOPE believes families heal best when they have the support of safe loved ones. As such, the whole family (excluding any offenders) is encouraged to attend the first intake appointment and meet our treatment team to collaborate on services for everyone in the family. Funding for therapy services comes from a combination of grants, contracts, and Crime Victim Compensation. Most clients are with us long term and, therefore, interns can expect to provide services to clients for 9+ months. Interns will also co-lead various trauma recovery groups; depending upon need, these may include a multi-family group for childhood sexual abuse, age-specific coping skill groups for children and adults, and sexual assault or domestic violence recovery groups.

Didactics within Reaching HOPE focus on understanding the systems trauma survivors interface with, trauma treatment, the oppression that exists for our clients and for ourselves, and the roles we play in dismantling racism and other forms of oppression. In part, this includes a focus on having a holistic approach to wellness, including a healthy work/life balance which starts with all team members working 10-hour workdays in order to reduce travel time and days spent at work. This means that our interns can choose between having three Fridays (or another day each week) off per month or working only for a couple of hours one day every week. Additionally, we have quarterly team connection days and daily opportunities for connection and laughter with one another. 

It is important to note that while Reaching HOPE partners with integrated care settings for this internship, Reaching HOPE itself is a community-based organization and provides services more in line with a Community Mental Health Center. Applicants who are specifically interested in careers in non-profit/community mental health work, and may be interested in some exposure to hospital / integrated care settings, are typically the best fit for this internship. 

Due to billing requirements, interns must hold a Master’s degree, though this does not need to be a terminal degree.

The primary objective of this program is to teach interns how to assess and treat complex trauma in family systems and to support helping/frontline professionals by implementing a phase-based approach. At the completion of this rotation, trainees will be able to:

1. Develop family systems and attachment-based conceptualizations of complex trauma
2. Implement a phase-based approach to complex trauma treatment with family systems 
   across different developmental ages utilizing individual, dyadic, and family therapy modalities
3. Provide a model of healthy system functioning to clients by collaborating with the treatment 
   team on care for the whole family and co-leading joint sessions with family members
4. Document clinical visits 

Through this rotation, trainees will have the opportunity to: 

1. Attend weekly Reaching HOPE didactics
2. Attend twice daily whole team group supervision 
3. Attend clinical trainings, therapist meetings, and participate in collaborative handoffs at Ralston House (child advocacy center) and other partner agencies
4. Watch a phase-based family systems therapy delivery and provide this model across different developmental ages
5. Consult, coordinate, and collaborate with members of the treatment team on all joint family cases
6. Coordinate with multi-disciplinary collaterals as appropriate (e.g., detectives, GALs, child protection workers, district attorneys, law enforcement)

1. Intakes: Interns will co-conduct intakes of families with the treatment team. Intakes include screening for appropriate level of care, psychoeducation on Reaching HOPE’s family systems model of treatment, administration, and review of symptom questionnaires, and interviewing and assessment of relevant psychosocial, legal, and system factors.
2. Treatment Planning: Interns will complete individualized treatment plans for clients that incorporate symptom questionnaire results and address both individual and family trauma recovery goals.
3. Therapy: Interns will effectively use Reaching HOPE’s model for treatment of complex trauma in family systems, which integrates evidence-based practice for individuals and extends this to a family system.
4. Interns will provide an average of 16 to 18 direct client-facing hours per week across all age ranges with a mix of primary and secondary victims for combined individual/family treatment
5. Interns will co-lead 1-2 therapy groups. Group focus will depend on need, but will likely include a multi-family group therapy for trauma survivors.
6. Documentation: Interns are expected to complete documentation of client visits in Reaching HOPE’s electronic health record system within the same business day.
7. Interns will have the opportunity to specialize in one of four areas in addition to participating in the family trauma recovery program. Specialization area will be determined through discussion with the Reaching HOPE team about your interest, experience and training goals: 
   1. Bilingual Specialty: Interns fluent in Spanish who can provide comprehensive clinical therapy services in Spanish can be part of Reaching HOPE’s Bilingual Track. As part of the track, interns will have the opportunity to work alongside our bilingual staff to serve our monolingual Latine clients and their families. Those who are part of the Bilingual Track will also attend weekly Spanish group supervision with bilingual staff including doctoral trainees, interns, and case management. Spanish group supervision is led by Dr. Juanita Torres, Reaching HOPE’s full-time bilingual psychologist.
   2. Family Safety Center Specialty: Interns will attend weekly meetings with the Domestic Violence High Risk Team (DVHRT) to provide trauma-informed treatment recommendations and collaborate/consult with community partners on mental health treatment referrals. Additionally, interns will work alongside Dr. Ambra Born, executive director, to support the development of the Family Safety Center, a collaborative center being created by Adams County that will serve victims of interpersonal violence including DV, sexual abuse, human trafficking, and elder abuse survivors with wrap-around services including housing, financial assistance, legal services, and mental health services. Interns will also be the main contact for referrals from community partners and take lead on family cases that come in through community partnerships within the Family Safety Center. 
   3. Non-profit Management Specialty: Interns will have the opportunity to build skills within the non-profit sector including grant writing and reporting, partner/relationship building, and understanding the inner workings of non-profit management.
   4. Consultation-Liaison Specialty: Interns will have the opportunity to work alongside forensic interviews and victims advocates at our local child advocacy center, Ralston House. Child advocacy centers provide a safe and developmentally sensitive/centered environment for children who have experienced a crime to come in and complete their forensic interview. Interns will participate in staffing with a multidisciplinary team where cases are reviewed. Interns will also offer warm hand-offs for non-offending parents who attend interviews with their children. Warm hand-offs include a review of local mental health providers that offer crime victims compensation (funding provided to victims and their families after a crime occurred and was reported to the police) as well as basic resources and skills for containment. Interns will also have the opportunity to consult with providers who complete Sex Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) exams as well as meet with victims and families before and/or after SANE exams are completed. 

Reaching HOPE specializes in serving survivors of complex, intergenerational, and relational trauma. The vast majority of clients are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, homicide, foster care placement, and race-based trauma. Typically, most families are referred to Reaching HOPE following an outcry of abuse that is reported to police or human services. Most clients at Reaching HOPE have no out-of-pocket expenses for treatment. There is a small percentage of self-referred and self-pay clients at Reaching HOPE that do not qualify for one of our grants, contracts, or funding sources. Occasionally, clients with single incident trauma such as car accidents, car jackings, or home invasions will present for treatment as well. Reaching HOPE also provides psychological assessments, often for diagnostic clarity on complex cases.

Interns will be trained in a specific phase-based approach for treating complex trauma within a family system. Reaching HOPE’s model integrates evidence-based practice for individuals with complex trauma and extends this to a family system. Theoretical orientation integrates Structural Family Therapy, Attachment Theory, and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, with a focus on meeting a client where they are and addressing client-identified needs first.

Interns receive twice daily group supervision with the entire treatment team, run by a Licensed Psychologist. Additionally, interns receive individual supervision with 2 Licensed Psychologists, alternating weeks (one focused on adults and one focused on youth), meet with the Executive Director on a biweekly basis for Professional Development, and have one additional supervision on a weekly or bi-weekly basis dependent on their area of specialty. Informal supervision also occurs throughout the day with an open-door policy and debriefing on joint sessions.

As a part of their time with the general integrated care training experience, interns would also spend focused time addressing the needs of the family medicine population that is struggling with opioid use disorder, chronic pain, or is in need of medication assisted treatment. This work may involve delivering evidence-based individual or group treatment to individuals with chronic pain or receiving chronic opioid therapy (COT), participating as a part of an interdisciplinary team member in complex case conferences involving patients receiving COT, or supporting quality improvement or program evaluation efforts to assess the efficacy of these programs.

Adding NEW For the 2024-2025 training year:
We also offer psychology interns the opportunity to strengthen their clinical supervision skills. They are matched with practicum / extern students whom they meet with regularly to provide case consultation for primary care behavioral health patients during the later part of their training year. The clinic will be moving late 2023 to a brand new location in Louisville, CO. This welcome change will provide an opportunity for the clinic to expand, adding 2.5 medical providers including a new Medical Director. 

Louisville is a great place to live and to work. The clinic is very close to Rte 36. It is 7.5 miles from CU Boulder and 22 miles from CU Denver. Below is a description of the town:

The town of Louisville was founded by miners, but today it is often recognized for its livability. Many things contribute to this including 1,700 acres of open space, dozens of great eateries, a thriving arts scene, great schools, wonderful neighborhoods, and a diverse mix of local businesses. Louisville was named among the best places to live by Money Magazine, 10 Best Towns for Families in the U.S. by Family Circle Magazine, Safest Places to Live by Elite Personal Finance, Best Cities to Live in Colorado by ChamberofCommerce.org, and Most Budget-Friendly Cities for Renters by LendEUD. 

Our multidisciplinary teams include physicians, psychologists, care managers, pharmacists, social work, and tele-psychiatry consultants.  There are many opportunities for psychology interns to work collaboratively on a multidisciplinary team.  

The overarching goal of the primary care psychology major rotation is to train psychologists to provide a full range of clinical primary care psychology services as key members of multi-disciplinary healthcare teams, develop an array of interprofessional competencies, and become leaders in this growing area of healthcare. Specific goals include developing core competencies of primary care psychology such as providing consultations to patients and providers, participating in multidisciplinary care teams, providing brief individual therapy services, becoming skilled with warm hand offs and co-consultations, providing diagnostic clarification and brief assessment, providing in-patient consultation, providing group interventions, and assisting with population-based care initiatives. We provide many opportunities for interns to become familiar with the varied roles that psychologists can have in medical teams and participate with team member in myriad ways to improve care for patients and populations.

Interns will work collaboratively with family medicine residents and attending providers to best care for patients during in-patient hospitalizations. In particular, services such as mental health screening, brief mental health interventions, health behavior change interventions, family meetings, and discharge plans are engaged effectively in this team format. Interns will observe these interactions, act independently, and receive supervision during this learning experience.

Interns will work collaboratively with family medicine residents and attending providers to best care for patients during in-patient hospitalizations. In particular, services such as mental health screening, brief mental health interventions, health behavior change interventions, family meetings, and discharge plans are engaged effectively in this team format. Interns will observe these interactions, act independently, and receive supervision during this learning experience.

Interns will engage in the provision of primary care psychology services in collaboration with attending psychologists, family physicians, psychiatrists, care managers, psychiatric nurse practitioners, physician assistants, RN’s, MAs, social workers, medical students, residents, graduate psychology students, and pharmacy students.

These services may include:

1. Consultation regarding behavioral health questions and presenting problems.
2. Consulting with physicians about patient care, mental health, and health behavior change.
3. Provision of team-based care.
4. Teaching and supporting patient self-management skills.
5. Facilitation of health-related support groups.
6. Individual patient assessment and intervention.
7. Health promotion/disease prevention interventions.
8. Psychological screening and assessments.
9. Home visits with a multidisciplinary team.
10. Opportunities to supervise psychology practicum students.

Interns will contribute to the education and training of medical trainees via:

1. Collaborative care/clinical teaching.
2. Small group teaching.
3. Coaching physicians in techniques of health behavior change.
4. Medical precepting (supervision of psychosocial aspects of medical care).
5. Hospital rounds.

Interns may potentially participate in ongoing research and/or program development in community-based medicine with options including:

1. Serving on grant writing teams.
2. Participation in clinical home visits.
3. Participation in practice-based research working groups.
4. Focal study of a selected underserved population.

Interns will master a primary care psychology curriculum through:

1. Direct patient care in the primary care setting.
2. Attending lecture and seminar series/select readings.
3. Participation in medical school education activities.
4. Participation in supervision.

Our patient population includes insured and underinsured patients from a large variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.

The rotation supervisors are well versed in evidence-based approaches to interventions in primary care, medical specialty, and traditional mental health settings. Trainees can expect to gain exposure to and expertise in behavioral activation, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and health behavior change assessment and intervention.

Interns will receive a minimum of 3 hours of supervision per week.

*Please note that beginning in December 2023, this clinic’s location will change to :

CU Medicine Family Medicine - Louisville
361 Century Place,Suite 120
Louisville, CO  80027