The Lutheran Spine Center is an integrated, multidisciplinary spine specialty clinic affiliated with Lutheran Medical Center within the SCL Health-Intermountain Healthcare System. The Spine Center takes a comprehensive approach to treating acute and chronic spine pain, with a team that includes psychologists, physiatrists, physical therapists, and acupuncturists. Our comprehensive approach allows us to treat many of the complex factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of pain.
Though our medical providers take a primarily noninterventional approach to pain treatment, we collaborate with surgeons in the SCL Health-Intermountain Healthcare system to provide pre- and post-surgery care to help optimize patient outcomes. Our goal is to improve our patients’ quality of life and return them to the activities that are the most important to them.
As a psychology intern, you will have opportunities to provide short term psychotherapy (approximately 8 visits) focusing on pain management and the social and emotional fallout of chronic pain, co-facilitate pain education classes, participate in monthly staff meetings, and collaborate as a member of a multidisciplinary team. There may also be opportunities to complete presurgical psychological assessments for patients identified as candidates for spine surgery. Likewise, those interns who have had previous training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia may have opportunities to apply this skill with a pain population.