APPIC - Hospital Setting Application Advice?

[u/Ashamed-Cow887]

Hello all!

Well the year has come for my APPIC application. I am aiming for an inpatient/hospital setting.

Today, a professor mentioned that getting certifications or something similar may help achieve a match. Any recommendations for cert classes or anything similar that would be helpful?

Thanks!

[u/bmatt__]

I’ve never heard of needing an additional certification to optimize a match at a hospital. I matched at one with an outpatient clinic in CA and didn’t have any additional certifications other than working in a similar setting during a practicum year.

[u/Appropriate_Fly5804]

You don’t need any specific certifications.

Having hospital prac experience helps, as does experience and interest in evidence based practices. 

Assessment experience and having more than the bare minimum of integrated reports is also helpful.

So if you still need to boost these areas, your remaining prac placement(s) could really important.

[u/Wicked4Good]

I matched at a hospital setting for internship (was my first choice too). I didn’t have any explicit hospital experience but I did have 2 years integrative behavioral health experience. To be honest, the supervisors told me that they rank based on how well the intern would fit in the program over prior experience. (They told us this bc we helped with interviews for the next cohort.) So they were looking for an intern who was able to keep up with a fast paced environment, was organized, was willing to be flexible style-wise and someone who was open to learning. But then also we were looking at personality (as much as we could) who match well with the supervisors. Not always super easy to do in interviews but they had a pretty good success rate. We rated the interviewees and they seemed to hold our ratings pretty high.

[u/Freudian_Split]

VA psychologist here, internship and postdoc in VA hospitals prior to working there.

We do not look for things like specific certifications and honestly, unless it makes sense for the work you have been doing, it may read like trying to boost an application.

What we want is people with 1) prior VA experience, 2) prior medical center experience if you haven’t been at a VA, and really 3) experience working in integrated teams. Medical centers are large interdisciplinary sandboxes and being able to speak the language of medicine, speech language pathology, nursing, pharmacy, that’s a huge leg up. We want to see that you have some record of getting along well with other disciplines.

Our program trains generalists so we also want to see some range of experience. Your internship, in a VA at least, is very likely to require practicing in VERY different specialty clinics and teams. We like rounded applicants. Have an area of focus, great, but also know more than one approach or clinical population.