University Hospital offers four one-year, post-doctoral fellowships in clinical Health Psychology. Three of these positions are in the Adult Track and one of these positions is in the Pediatric Track.
About Our Program
The program involves a 12-month, full-time experience (2,000 hours), providing the necessary post-doctoral hours required for licensure to practice psychology independently in the state of Wisconsin. The program is designed to provide didactic and clinical training in preparation for professional work in a variety of medical settings. Graduates of our program are competitively prepared to work in academic medical centers, private hospitals, independent psychology practices with medical specialization, academic psychology departments and outpatient medical clinics.
The program is based upon a practitioner-scholar model offering hands-on experience complemented by knowledge of relevant psychological science. Our intent is to prepare fellows to move competently across a variety of health psychology settings and to use a wide range of skills.
Program Philosophy
Based in a nationally recognized academic medical center, the fellowship program involves training with a wide variety of patients, problems and treatment teams. Our philosophy is to provide a broad array of experiences across the medical center rather than specialized training in one or two areas. A minimum of 80 percent of each fellow’s time is focused on adult medical-surgical inpatients at UW Hospitals and Clinics (Adult Track) or with pediatric medical-surgical inpatients and their families at American Family Children’s Hospital (Pediatric Track). In this capacity, fellows work across a variety of medical services and provide assessment and treatment to patients with acute and chronic needs.
During this 80 percent time, fellows also gain experience performing pre-procedural psychological evaluations. Adult Track fellows perform outpatient pre-surgical transplantation evaluations for potential organ transplant recipients and living organ donors. These include evaluations within the Cardiopulmonary and Abdominal Transplant Center. The Pediatric fellow performs outpatient evaluations in the Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) service.
In addition, each fellow spends one day per week in a medical specialty clinic providing outpatient assessment and intervention services. The Pediatric fellow will work in the Child Health Psychology Clinic working with patients with pediatric pain, sleep disorders, and acute and chronic illness. The Adult fellows will be based in an outpatient Health Psychology Clinic such as the Carbone Cancer Clinic, the Deming Way Health Psychology Clinic or the UW Pain Clinic. Having one day per week in an outpatient clinic allows fellows a complement to their inpatient service.
Throughout their experiences and the training year, fellows are required to perform consultation with multidisciplinary medical teams and often play a key role as the psychological consultant to these teams. Fellows also have the opportunity to engage in program development, mentoring of practicum students and interns (when on site) and/or teaching of medical residents and other allied health providers during their training year.
The fellowship program is a member of APPIC and administered by the Health Psychology faculty within the Department of Behavioral Medicine.
More Information
Contact Information
Stephanie Farrell, Ph.D.
Director of Fellowship Training in Health Psychology
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics
600 Highland Avenue
Madison, Wisconsin
sfarrell@uwhealth.org
608-262-9185
Related Resources
UW Health Behavioral Health
Health Psychology Practicum