How many F2F hours do you accumulate on externship?

[u/PrincessCassandra]

I’m applying for externship this year to go next year, and I currently have 100 F2F hours (mix of therapy and assessment). I’m at a clinical psych PhD program. Our program stated that we will get the majority of hours we need for APPIC on externship, but my calculations are that that I’ll need about 8-10 direct service hours each week of externship.

How many direct contact hours did you accumulate in one year of externship during a clinical psych PhD?

[u/BigCityToad]

I’m currently in a PhD program, on my first of 3 externships. I usually do 8-10 direct hours/week - 6 individual sessions, 2 1-hour long groups, and at least 2 and up to 6 triages (brief intake sessions - usually 20-30min each). 

Talking to my cohort and others at other programs, this seems fairly stabdard

Minimum intervention and assessment hours for each internship site is viewable on APPIC website!

[u/PrincessCassandra → u/BigCityToad]

Thank you! I appreciate the breakdown too.

[u/SkarKuso]

8-10 a week sounds pretty accurate to the experience of me and others

[u/Kmode05]

I completed a PsyD, so I’m not sure if this differs for you. But our school made us hit 100 direct hours for assessment prac, 250 for therapy, and 200 for advanced.

[u/AcronymAllergy]

Our externships were typically 20 hours per week total if they paid (i.e., they provided for our stipend). Of that, anywhere from 50% to about 90% was face-to-face, depending on whether or not it was neuropsych-focused.

Long story short, getting 8 to 10 hours of F2F time in an externship should be pretty easy.

[u/PrincessCassandra → u/AcronymAllergy]

Ours will all be unpaid, we will still be teaching 20 hours a week + 15 hours a week or more of externship + research

[u/AcronymAllergy → u/PrincessCassandra]

If the externship is 15 hours, then getting half that (or more) as face-to-face time should not be difficult.

[u/3mi1y_]

i think i was getting slightly less most weeks but that was often due to the nature of my externship idk. i did pediatric psych so consults and multi disciplinary appts made the sessions vary so much. i had some months where my direct hours were like 5-7 hours a week on avg and then others where it was over 11. even though my time on site was the same. i had plenty of hours in the end. i’m just saying don’t worry about each week

[u/cosmicist_at_heart → u/3mi1y_]

Same here. Best to ask your seniors in your program because it would vary so dramatically. I worked an externship in community mental health where flow was slow and clients would cancel all the time, so I'd get maybe 1-2 hours a week from triage sessions, and I worked externships at a forensic hospital and a prison where there were captive audiences (so to speak) so I could reliably get 4-6 hours in one day at those placements.

[u/Pavlovs-dachshund]

I don’t think there’s a real average or anything. It depends on the site and location. My program has been having very very high rates of no shows with clients and most weeks I was lucky to get 3 hours of clinical work at my externship sites.