Preparing Psychology and Psychologists for New Health Care Markets

Abstract

Because our training archetypes in Clinical Psychology have not kept pace with the rapid changes in the health care marketplace, we may be in danger of preparing psychologists for markets that no longer exist. The nearest generations of psychologists will require the skills of the entrepreneur and the leader in addition to a range of core clinical skills. At the same time, our profession's historic commitment to science as the best epistemic game in town may originator if we fail to pay better attention to knowledge translation (i.e., in what manner to move scientific findings expeditiously from the laboratory into practice).

Two new incidents helped crystallize my thinking about the challenges to psychology and psychologists from continuing changes in the health care marketplace.1 In the first instance, I serv as a member of a working cluster in the Calgary Health Region designing a of recent origin ambulatory rehabilitation program that is designed to put in motion all outpatient rehabilitation care on the outside of the acute care sites and into the community. When operational in 2007 three community midmost points will provide comprehensive rehabilitation care to a diverse population, including patients with musculoskeletal injuries, amputees, neurologically ill patients, and frail seniors. The funding pattern for the community ambulatory rehabilitation program provided for single psychologist to provide service to all three middle points and all these populations.

As part of the planning exercise, the day came when the collection turned to me and asked: "What pattern of psychological services is there for this kind of program and where can we find a psychologist trained to do this work?" My answer was: "There isn't any prototype of care. We don't train psychologists for this kind of work." This is a brand fresh market and whoever comes to it is essentially going to have to make it up as he or she goe along.

In the next to the first instance, the Calgary Health Region leaders have realized, perhaps belatedly, the serious impact of chronic illness upon the populations we serve and decided to exhibit a comprehensive program of care to address the urgencys of these populations. The initial focus of the Chronic Disease Management Strategy is upon patients with diabetes, hypertension, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. a great deal of evidence converges on the conclusion that it makes faculty of perception to consider these and many other chronic illnesses to be behaviour disorders, because the kinds of things that lead to and maintain them have to do with by what means people act, think, and perceive Not surprisingly, Chronic Disease Management program unravelling activities have focused heavily upon habit change, lifestyle modification, and upon enhancing readiness to change, all of the things that would appear to be right up psychology's professional alley. Although psychologists are involved in various aspects of these programs and in the program unravelling activity itself, my more importunate question is: "Why aren't we in charge of this?"

These sum of two units situations reflect the changing face of health care provision in Canada. They challenge psychology's traditional rules of preparing students for practice and the way psychology provides practitioners with the tools that they ne for of that kind practice. I propose, first, that although the health care marketplace has changed substantially, our training archetypes and methods have not. The challenge for the nearest generation of psychologists and for those who train them is to prepare fresh graduates with the skills necessary to anticipate and adapt to entirely novel markets. In addition to the clinical knowledge, skills, and wisdom that we currently develop in our learners and young psychologists, we ne to equip them with sum of two units other critical skill sets: those of the entrepreneur and those of the leader. next to the first I consider that the greatest in quantity critical issue for psychological training and practice in the time to come is no longer whether we are scientist-practitioners, scholar-practitioners, scientists, practitioners, or any other of the entities that have preoccupied us in training for the past 50 years. The more critical issue now is by what means we transfer knowledge effectively and efficiently from the psychological laboratory to the practice marketplace, in ways that genuinely make a difference.

Preparing Entrepreneur and Leaders

In 1994 Keith Dobson and I had the opportunity to plan and coordinate a conversation on Professional Psychology under the auspices of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), the Canadian Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology (CRHSPP) and several other prominent psychological organizations in Canada. The Mississauga discourse like its predecessors, took its name from the convening location. Working collections formed around the topics of training, advocacy, and funding. At the talk I worked within the Funding cluster Among the principles that we propos to the plenary assemblage for adoption, were:

Psychology is a business, as well as a science, profession, and discipline, and psychologists should have the core knowledge and skill put in good business practices. Psychologists have a reasonable expectation of profit from their professional activities. (Dobson & King, 1994)