The only Internship Training experience offered by the Department of Psychology at The Ottawa Hospital is the Pre-Doctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology. The prerequisites and application process are listed below.

Internship Guide Booklet

Overview

The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) is one of the largest Academic Health Sciences Centre in Canada. As a nationally-recognized teaching hospital, education, training, and research are integral to TOH’s mandate.

Program History

The Clinical Internship Program at TOH has been accredited by the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) since 1992. Due to the travel restrictions and social distancing requirements outlined by Canada’s provincial health ministries, the CPA Accreditation Panel met on March 18, 2020 and voted to postpone all accreditation-related site visits and grant one-year extensions of term to those programmes affected by this postponement. Our accreditation site visit, due in the 2019-2020 academic year,  was postponed until March of 2021. CPA reaccreditation was granted for 7 years, from 2020/2021 to 2027/28.

The Neuropsychology Program was accredited from 1994 and re-accreditation was granted from 2012/13 to 2016/17. We made the decision to integrate our accredited Clinical Psychology and Clinical Neuropsychology Training programs as of 2016-2017. Neuropsychology training is now provided as a stream within the Clinical Training Program.

Information on accreditation by the Canadian Psychological Association is available by contacting the following office:

Training Model

The Training Program’s philosophy is a broad-based model of training with the view that this approach best prepares interns for autonomous practice as professional psychologists. In addition, TOH Psychology training faculty are committed to the scientist-practitioner model and espouse the belief that a research informed perspective promotes clinical excellence, and that clinical practice informs and promotes research developments.

Psychology Services

The Training Program draws on the diverse and specialized clinical opportunities afforded by a large tertiary care setting, and by a large and accomplished group of professional psychologists. Interns gain experience in assessment, diagnosis, intervention, interprofessional consultation, program development and evaluation, teaching, and research. Interns receive training in inclusionary, culturally safe, allyship, and anti-racism practices. Interns are expected to provide direct clinical services across varied populations, including, but not limited to people with disabilities, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, individuals who have been racialized and systemically marginalized, and diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds.

Professional socialization is fostered to facilitate effective patient care through interactions with Psychology training faculty, support staff, health care professionals, and interprofessional teams. The Training Program supports interns in the development of training plans that complement and round their training in keeping with the generalist model, as well as meet their professional and clinical interests and aspirations. The training faculty (supervisors) and Director of Training, work with interns to prioritize workload to support balance between work and personal life. The overall goal of the Training Program is to provide a respectful and collegial training atmosphere and to foster a professional identity as a psychologist.

Track Options

We offer 4 full time predoctoral internship positions:

The Clinical Stream includes 3 track options:

1. Mental Health – Rehabilitation Psychology
2. Health Psychology – Rehabilitation Psychology
3. Mental Health – Health Psychology

The Neuropsychology Stream includes a single track

We welcome applications to multiple Tracks;,include your interests to the tracks to which you are applying within your cover letter.

Stipends and BenefitsEach position is funded at $32,500.00 CDN annually, with a $400.00 allowance for educational conferences, and 3 weeks vacation.

Prerequisites

Pre-doctoral intern applicants should have completed most of their graduate level education in an accredited clinical psychology program.

We subscribe to the APPIC principles and CPA accreditation standards regarding preparation for internship. Applicants are required to have had their dissertation approved and to have completed their course work prior to applying for internship. A minimum of 600 practicum hours is needed, with 300 hours of direct client contact and 150 hours of supervision to apply.Applicants are not rated on the basis of “raw number of practicum hours” reported on APPIC application forms; quality and depth of practicum training are more relevant than total number of hours. However, applicants more likely to be ready to submit or defend their thesis prior to commencing the internship will, all other things being equal, be ranked more highly.

* In exceptional circumstances, if some core coursework is not completed at the time of application but a student’s program Director of Clinical Training certifies that this course will be completed by December 31, 2021 then the application will still be accepted, considered, and reviewed. In those cases, confirmation of coursework completion must be provided to us no later than January 31, 2022 to consider the applicant for ranking with the National Matching Service.

Applicants to the programs are ranked according to several criteria including, and in no particular order:

1. The match between an applicant’s clinical training interests and our internship program;
2. The breadth and depth of an applicant’s psychodiagnostic assessment training and his / her psychotherapy and training experience. At a minimum, applicants who are offered an interview will have conducted and written at least 5 assessment reports and provided therapy to at least 5 patients;
3. The applicant’s practicum experiences in hospital-based settings and experiences working with interprofessional teams;
4. Reference letters from clinical supervisors;
5. Impressions of the applicant’s suitability and match with our internship program based on the interview;
6. The applicant’s clinical research experience and/or interests, as well as their progress towards completion of their doctoral dissertation;

The Department of Psychology at The Ottawa Hospital welcomes applications from individuals representing a wide spectrum of diversity, including ethnic or cultural background, 2SLGBTQQIA physical disability. As services are provided in both English and French, proficiency  in both languages is an asset, but is not required. All TOH charting and report writing is in English. In the selection process, priority is given to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or international students with valid Canadian Co-op Work Permits.

All staff, medical staff and learners will be required to have been fully vaccinated with a WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment and/or credentialing at TOH.This means that to work at The Ottawa Hospital, in any capacity, you must provide proof that you have been fully vaccinated or have an approved medical and/or other exception in accordance with the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Application Procedure

The Program is a member of the Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Programs (CCPPP) and the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centres (APPIC),and adheres to APPIC policy regarding internship offers and acceptances. This internship site agrees to abide by the APPIC policy that no person at this training facility solicit, accept or use any ranking-related information from any intern applicant.

This internship program is participating in the APPIC Internship Matching Program. All applicants must register with the National Matching Services National Matching Services(Opens in a new tab)  and/or APPIC Internship Matching Program(Opens in a new tab) to be considered for this internship.

Interested applicants should complete the following through the Applicant Portal of the AAPI online:

1. Completed APPIC Application.
2. Verification and electronic signature completed by the University Training Director attesting to the applicant’s readiness for an internship.
3. Three letters of reference – we do not require a letter of reference from your dissertation supervisor. Choose whomever can best speak to your abilities, goals, and training needs. The letter of reference format can be obtained on the APPIC website.(Opens in a new tab)
4. Graduate transcripts.
5. Curriculum Vitae

Applicants may apply to more than one track and need to indicate the tracks to which they are applying in their cover letter. We also encourage applicants to indicate their preferences for training experiences within their cover letters, as this allows us to make every effort to ensure that applicants who interview at our site are able to meet with potential supervisors during the interview. For more information, see the Application Procedure Section below.

Each Track has an APPIC number as follows:

Interview Dates and Arrangements

In keeping with the Canadian Council for Professional Psychology Programs’ (CCPPP) recommendation for virtual interviews to support equity and access, all interviews for TOH will be virtual (phone or videoconferencing). We will not be offering any in-person interviews.

Interview dates

December 13, 14, & 16, 2021

January 11, 12, 14, & 17, 2022.

Please rank order the interview dates and include this information in your cover letter.

Completed applications must be received no later than November 5, 2021. All interview notifications are made on December 3, 2021, by 5:00 pm PST, by email. To optimize the ability of applicants to review their offers and consider their schedules, we will be adhering to the CCPPP national response day.  Arrangements for interviews will commence on December 6, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. EST.

Privacy and your application

In accordance with federal privacy legislation(Opens in a new tab) (Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act), we are committed to collecting only the information required to process your application. This information is secured within Psychology at TOH and is shared only with those individuals involved in the internship application process. Information collected by The Ottawa Hospital for applicants who are not matched with the TOH program is destroyed within 3 weeks of Match Day. Files of applicants matched to our program will be available only to those involved in the applicant’s supervision and training including the Director of Training, supervisors, relevant administrative support staff, the Profession Leader of Psychology, and relevant staff of the Human Resources Department at TOH.

Last updated on: July 26th, 2022