Universal Psychology Postdoctoral Directory

Elements of quality clinically focused postdoctoral training

The North Texas Health Care System (VANTHCS) offers a two-year postdoctoral residency in Neuropsychology and recruits one resident every year maintaining a total of 2 residents per year. We are a member of the Association of Postdoctoral Programs in Neuropsychology (APPCN; www.appcn.org) and follow a practitioner/scholar training model that follows APA Division 40/ Houston Conference Guidelines (Hannay, 1998). As such, this program will assist you in meeting prerequisite requirements for board certification in Clinical Neuropsychology through the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). Our APPCN Neuropsychology training program runs alongside our larger APA approved postdoctoral program at the Dallas VA which includes six additional postdoctoral positions in Substance Abuse, Medical Psychology, Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT), Geropsychology and Family/Couples Therapy. Our program is independently accredited by APA (Fully Accredited) in the specialty of Clinical Neuropsychology through 2025. 

Our main goal is to prepare you for independent practice, help you become more established within the field of Neuropsychology, develop your professional identity and provide a foundation to successfully complete the ABPP process following completion of the fellowship. The workload distribution includes 60% clinical time, 20% didactics, 10% tiered supervision and 10% research with emphasis on providing empirically based assessments and interventions. 

 Outline of Training Year:

Year 1: 1st 6 months, NP Consult Team with 3 evaluations per week, didactics, research. 2nd 6 months, NP Consult Team 2 days a week, didactics, research, Neurology inpatient experience.  

Year 2: NP Consult Team 2 days week, minor rotation 1 to 2 days a week, didactics, research, outpatient Neurology, supervision.   

Major Rotation: Neuropsychology Consult Team Fellows are primarily housed in the Neuropsychology Consult Team. This team primarily conducts both outpatient and inpatient evaluations (rare) from wide referral sources including Neurology, Mental Health, and Primary Care. The cases seen on this team are typically complex in nature with contributing medical, psychological and neurological etiologies to consider. Fellows are responsible for seeing 2-3 patients in this clinic per week. 

Neurology Experience: Fellows will have the opportunity to shadow various neurologists through a variety of settings including inpatient rounds, General Neurology outpatient clinic, MS clinic, and Movement Disorders clinic. 

Minor Rotations: Minor rotations are completed to help increase one’s breadth and depth of training during the second year of training.  The length of time and number of rotations one takes is primarily based on the fellows' interests and desires. You can choose no less than 2 and no more than 3 minor rotations. The rotations you can choose from are as follows: 

MH Silver Team (Geropsychiatry team): Patients age 70 and older are assigned to this team for their care regardless of their psychiatric diagnosis. In this manner, the Silver Team is very much a general practice team with specialization in terms of the age cohort which it treats. Residents work within the context of an interdisciplinary team at all stages of patient evaluation and treatment. They acquire knowledge of and skills in neuropsychological assessment and common mental health problems associated with aging. The vast majority of work will be with outpatients conducting comprehensive assessments, determination of capacity, and if desired, individual and/or group psychotherapy. However, the Neuropsychology Resident may be called upon periodically to see inpatients. Residents will be actively engaged in all aspects of evaluations from test-selection to feedback and there is the possibility of layered supervision with interns or practicum students. 

Community Living Center (CLC: Rehabilitation/Extended care): The CLC is a 120-bed extended care facility which provides rehabilitation in an interdisciplinary setting for veterans who are recovering from stroke, those who need long-term care due to chronic illness (e.g., of caretaker, those who need hospice care due to terminal illness (e.g., cancer, AIDS), those who suffer from various kinds of dementia, and those who have experienced traumatic brain injury. Residents participate in all the activities of the interdisciplinary treatment team and will function with responsibility for the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of veterans. Opportunities for experience with groups include participation in support groups for caregivers and involvement in the AEGIS volunteer peer counseling program at the Community Living Center. Additional experience with veterans suffering from heart disease is provided through evaluation of veterans in the congestive heart failure clinic, the pre-surgical evaluation clinic, the post-cardiac surgery intensive care unit and the cardiac rehabilitation program. Approximately 70% of a resident's time will be spent in assessment-oriented activities and 30% in treatment activities during this rotation.