Postdoctoral internships: Potential adverse impacts on interships, dissertations, and trainees

Increased consideration of transforming the predoctoral psychology internship into a post-doctoral training experience has resulted from changes in the training and reimbursement for psychology trainees, concerns about employment of recent graduates, and the perceived limited status of psychology interns within health care settings. Whether this fundamental shift in psychology's training paradigm could resolve any of the problems that have led to its deliberation is not known. The authors identify problems with a postdoctoral internship which may be as thorny as the problems it is intended to ameliorate. It may have unintended adverse effects (e.g., risk of reduced quality in training and dissertations, new pressures on internship programs and trainees, increased licensure quandaries). Until a highly detailed proposal is developed and its full range of potential consequences are analyzed and debated, it is premature for professional organizations to conclude whether such fundamental change should be pursued.