The clinical psychologist as program consultant: When is enough enough?

Abstract

One of the most influential roles clinical psychologists play in health care settings is as consultant to medical colleagues. The psychologist consultant typically approaches either clinical or programmatic questions intending to tap both empirical research and clinical judgment perspectives in trying to answer them. This paper describes a specific "program consultation case," a not atypical consultation situation in which graduate medical education directors asked for advice about their residency training program. The purpose is to use this example to generate ideas and provoke discussion about such consultation processes and their usefulness in the health care training and service delivery world. The psychologist may be faced with questions that have meaningful implications beyond the specific consultation. What if the concerns being posed by this particular program are concerns which have been raised before, have been researched before, and have generated reasonable suggestions, conclusions, and strategies for improvement? And what if no one has paid attention, so that the questions are being raised again? When empirical and clinical data consistently combine to identify problems within health-related training or service delivery systems, and when suggestions or alternatives for their solutions have been presented and, also presumably, ignored, what does the clinical psychologist consultant do next?