Solid Organ Transplant/Living Donor Services

• Experience in the role of a psychologist on a multidisciplinary medical team
• Collaborate and liaison with multidisciplinary team
• Gain knowledge about transplant evaluations, interventions and liaison work with complex medical and psychiatric cases, and how to shape decision-making around specific consult questions
• Acquaintance with ethical concerns and considerations in transplant services
• Develop treatment plans or brief interventions appropriate for inpatient medical settings

• Interns will learn consultation and liaison skills for working with a multidisciplinary team
• Gain competence in completing comprehensive psychodiagnostic assessments which may involve the inclusion of neurocognitive and other measures as necessary
• Use appropriate, evidence-based interventions for patients with psychological complications on an inpatient unit
• Learn how to construct consult evaluations on inpatient units involving unique challenges, such as delirium or severe encephalopathy
• Learn best practices in participating as a member of a multidisciplinary medical team

Health Behavior and Psychological assessments: Semi-structured intake assessments to address specific consultation questions and guide treatment plan recommendations with the inclusion of psychological variables.

Psychotherapy: Conduct brief psychotherapeutic interventions for inpatients or post-transplant patients. This may involve in vivo interventions for patients who are experiencing barriers to engagement in recovery.

Treatment team meetings: Participate as an integral member of multidisciplinary selection committees. Interns will coordinate with a team of physicians including surgeons, hepatologists, nephrologists, pulmonologists, infectious disease and anesthesiologists, as well as other ancillary members including occupational therapists, physical therapists, nutritionists and others to determine the best care for transplant candidates or post-transplant patients.

Interns are encouraged to hone their own approaches using evidence-based practices. Typical situations which arise on both outpatient and inpatient transplant settings require biopsychosocial formulations with targeted brief interventions, such as solution-focused, trauma-based models, addiction recovery, cognitive behavioral, in vivo exposures, mindfulness, as well as adaptation of these interventions to specific cultural and ethnic needs, values, or paradigms.

• Brief and long-term psychotherapy (especially conceptualization)
• Adult individual psychotherapy
• Couples & Family psychotherapy
• Psychoeducation and Multidisciplinary

Patients attending the transplant center span the entire Rocky Mountain geo-region. As the largest transplant center in the Rocky Mountain catchment, it is typical to see patients from rural Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico. The transplant center provides services to a large indigenous population from New Mexico and coordination with Indian Health Services (IHS) may be expected.

Weekly supervision is provided to the intern for initial assessments, brief intervention, and psychotherapy. Supervision is conducted using a developmental approach so that the intern’s specific training needs are met. Interns begin by shadowing for orientation and then incrementally advance to a preceptor model. At least one hour of supervision is provided weekly to discuss cases and process one’s experiences, either immediately following cases or scheduled as needed.