Doctoral Internship

Doctoral Internship – San Jose

Silicon Valley Internship Consortium (Fremont, San Jose, and Santa Clara)

Policies and Procedures Salary and Benefits How to apply

The city of San Jose lies in the Santa Clara Valley about 50 miles southeast of San Francisco. With over 1 million residents, San Jose is a sprawling metropolitan area. The population is ethnically diverse, with large Asian and Hispanic communities that constitute three-fifths of the total population.

Nicknamed the capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose’s economy remains focused on high technology. Computer hardware design and manufacturing, software production, and Internet concerns are the major industries. The metro area retains its character with quirky attractions like the 160-room, maze-like Winchester Mystery House; a 120-acre flea market complete with ponies; and a larger-than-life Monopoly board. San Jose supports a variety of music, dance, and theatre organizations, including professional ballet and opera companies. Notable museums include the San Jose Museum of Art, the Tech Museum of Innovation, and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Several sports teams call San Jose home including the Sharks NHL team.

Cradled by the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range, San Jose offers a prime environment for outdoorsy residents, with its proximity to beaches along the California coast including Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel and state parks such as Henry Coe and Big Basin. The city boasts a number of local municipal parks and flower gardens as well.

The Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center is staffed with 400 physicians and 3,250 support staff and serves health plan members from South San Jose to Los Banos in the central valley. In addition to offering a full complement of inpatient and outpatient care, it features Regional Subspecialty Centers in Genetics, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Sleep Medicine, and Spine Care. Satellite clinics are located in Gilroy, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, and Watsonville.

Program Curriculum

Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity

We are committed to nurturing and integrating diversity training into all aspects of our doctoral internship by:

• Providing interns with opportunities to work with diverse patients who represent various aspects of diversity, including age, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, values, and lifestyle
• Placing a high value on interns’ willingness to engage in self-reflection and learning and supporting the exploration of attitudes, beliefs, and therapeutic postures that could have a negative impact on clinical interactions
• Maintaining a consistent focus in clinical supervision on expanding interns’ multicultural awareness and competence in the provision of psychotherapeutic services and by providing guidance, suggestions, and resources on topics related to diversity
• Providing formal in-person or online training on diversity topics such as discovering and mitigating unconscious bias, respecting every voice, and cultivating a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace
• Encouraging interns to participate in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Mental Health Training Program Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee’s advanced trainings on topics related to cultural sensitivity and competence alongside a forum to reflect on and discuss their varied experiences in a safe environment

Didactic Training and Seminars

Regularly scheduled weekly didactic seminars are organized and administered by the Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) Mental Health Training Program*. Interns are required to attend the two-hour weekly seminar, which focuses on aspects of clinical practice that the interns may not regularly encounter.

Diversity issues are always integrated into seminar presentations. Seminar topics include Frontiers in Trauma Treatment; Advanced Risk Assessment; Updates in Substance Abuse Research & Treatment; Advancements in Psychopharmacology; Cognitive Processing Therapy; Technology and Mental Health; Trans/Nonbinary Mental Health; Building a Better Brain through Exercise, Nutrition, Sleep and Stress Management; and Self-Compassion.

The KPNC Mental Health Training Program also sponsors professional training courses for continuing professional development. These courses and presentations are offered at select times during the year for all KPNC mental health trainees and medical center staff. The KPNC Mental Health Training Program brings in national experts and keynote speakers on a variety of cutting-edge topics in mental health treatment and research. Interns are expected to attend all MHTP Speaker Series seminars*. Current seminar schedules and a list of speakers and topics can be found on the KPNC Mental Health Training Programs website. In addition, many of these lectures are recorded and available on this website under the Continuing Education Seminar Library.

*All MHTP seminars are delivered using distance education technologies. Registration and meeting links via the host virtual platforms are required for entrance into online seminars. There are no fees associated with MHTP seminars, and intern privacy is prioritized at all times.*

Meetings and Case Consultation

Doctoral interns are expected to attend weekly team staff meetings and case consultation. During these meetings, interns will practice creating a working hypothesis for a diagnosis and treatment plan, as well as learn how to incorporate Feedback Informed Care (FIC) and symptom management in their treatment plans. Additionally, interns will learn how to align their patient’s cultural background into their treatment plan.

Supervision

All doctoral interns are supervised by licensed psychologists and are assigned to a primary and secondary supervisor. These two clinical supervisors meet with their assigned intern one hour per week for individual face-to-face supervision, for a total of two hours of individual supervision per week. Th