Utilizing Community Partners to Enhance Quality Intern Training

Psychology internship programs expand the knowledge of trainees using creative strategies and are required to reflect on whether or not their strategies are effective. Teaching and training while on internship should incorporate various methods of learning, i.e. experiential, lecture-based and/or collaborative learning. Collaboration with professional community partners into didactic lectures is an opportunity for trainees to gain exposure to unique specialty areas within psychology. A quality improvement initiative was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this training method. Interns’ evaluations of didactic lectures given by faculty members and community partners between 2010 and 2016 were compared. Results indicated interns rated faculty presentations higher overall compared to community partner presentations; however, the differences may be of low practical significance indicating commonalities between the quality of faculty and community partners presentations. Overall, results from the current study appear to support the use of utilizing community partners to support quality training in internship programs.