Academic interests and experiences of doctoral students in clinical psychology: Implications for prescription privilege training.

Abstract

A national survey of doctoral students in clinical psychology was conducted to determine how current doctoral students feel about the movement to obtain prescription privileges for psychologists and how these students' academic interests and aptitudes might match with a proposed model curricula for prescription training. More than two thirds of the students responding to the survey agreed that appropriately trained psychologists should have the legal authority to prescribe psychotropic medication, and approximately half agreed that if appropriate training to prescribe were available now, they would enroll. However, students' descriptions of their academic interests and experiences raise some important challenges for the designers of model curricula for prescription training.