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Licensure rules
outdated:
New Hampshire aims to update
(November
2006 Issue)
By Nan Shnitzler
At its February 2006 meeting, the American Psychological Association
Council of Representatives affirmed the doctorate as the minimum
requirement to become a practicing professional psychologist. A
key corollary is that doctoral graduates no longer need postdoctoral
training to become licensed; that is, if states choose to adopt
the policy. New Hampshire is on the brink.
For years, APA has been looking at the hardships new doctorates
face that make it difficult to practice, says Kate Saylor, Psy.D.,
executive director of the New Hampshire Psychological Association
(NHPA). With the policy change, APA hopes to dispel such issues
as delayed income, burdensome licensure rules and lack of training
positions.
Since the original APA policy was adopted 24 years ago, linking
postdoctoral training to licensure has become outdated, according
to the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students,
which is promoting the change to state affiliates. At that time,
a predoctoral internship was the only clinical experience students
received prior to completing their degree. Thus, a postdoctoral
training year before licensure made sense. Today, most students
get the equivalent of two years of clinical experience prior to
completing their degree.
Current regulations in New Hampshire require a pre-doctoral internship
of 1,500 hours and another 2,000 hours of postdoctoral supervision.
"That's a lot of hours in supervised training prior to applying
for licensure," Saylor says. "There are a lot of disadvantages to
that."
For one, students emerging from graduate school face repaying huge
loans. Seeking licensure upon graduation would ease the financial
burden. For another, an APA-approved training site can't get the
same reimbursement rate, if any, for a supervisee as it does for
a fully licensed practioner. Thus the practice loses revenue. As
a result, fewer post-doc positions materialize than candidates seeking
them, Saylor says.
Alternatively, candidates can pay a supervisor out of pocket for
the hours they need for licensure, adding to the financial burden.
"It all adds up to major complications for emerging psychologists
in the field," Saylor says.
The complications trickle down to the community. Like other rural
states, access to mental health care is a "major problem" in N.H.,
Saylor says. If budding psychologists find licensure onerous, they
will find somewhere else to practice, making it even harder for
the state to sustain community access to mental health services.
"The hope is by changing the rules it will attract psychologists
to New Hampshire and provide more access," Saylor says.
To be clear, she says NHPA is not seeking a reduction in clinical
supervised hours, merely a change in the sequence of supervision.
"Many students, by the time they get to their internships, have
already participated in hundreds of hours of supervised practical
experience and have achieved the hours they need," Saylor says.
NHPA has been working with the N.H. Board of Mental Health Practice
to change the licensing rules. The board licenses psychologists,
pastoral psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family
therapists, and each discipline has different rules.
While the board did not have a stated position, says Karen Jennings,
Ph.D., the board's sole psychologist, it was positively disposed
to making the rules change for licensing psychologists. "If people
down the pike have APA-approved training prior to their doctorate,
why should they be penalized from getting licensed here?" Jennings
says.
The board is eager to put something before the public for comment,
but Jennings would not specify a timeline. Saylor hopes it is within
a year. NHPA has been marshalling support from graduate students,
college faculty and psychologists. "Once it comes to the point of
public hearings, these people will be voices for us as we seek to
make these changes," Saylor says.
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