Transforming Psychology into a True Healthcare Discipline

Abstract

It has been my privilege to be the editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings (JCPMS) during a time when our health care system is in transformation. Recently, psychology’s survival has depended on its ability to interface its unique contributions with those of other health care disciplines and embed itself within medical settings. Subsequently, my goal has been to insure that JCPMS publishes articles that are representative of the cutting edge research health and clinical psychologists offer, provides descriptions of our education and training activities within academic health centers that are innovative, and offers reviews of clinical service delivery models that are community based and inter-professional resulting in high quality, cost effective, equitable health care. As an editor, I am particularly proud of the strategically chosen topics for Special Issues that I oversaw during my tenure. I believe that each of these Special Issues included vital information to our readership about maintaining psychology’s prominence in a health care world that is rapidly changing. The first of these Special Issue was the March 2008 issue, based on several talks presented at the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Center (APAHC) National Conference, titled Psychologists in Academic Health Centers: Traditions and Innovations in Education, Science and Practice. The second Special Issue was the March 2009 issue on Integrated Care (with special editor Rodger Kessler) and the third was the June 2011 issue Strengthening Our Soldiers (SOS) and Their Families: Contemporary Psychological Advances Applied to Wartime Problems (with special editor Barbara Melamed). I am also proud of the Special Sections that I have occasionally embedded in the issues published during my six year as editor of JCPMS. It is highly rewarding to see that psychology has become increasingly aware of its call to action during my editorship of JCPMS as the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) [P.L. 111–148] comes into full fruition. Our training programs have and will need to continue to focus more on prevention and health promotion, management of acute and chronic conditions, family experiences of care, care coordination, and access to care. The next generation of psychologists must be skilled at caring for a higher volume of patients as more individuals are insured in 2014 with implementation of the ACA. Additionally, training in new health care delivery models that employ team based service delivery is crucial as is coursework and clinical placements that prepare psychologists to better comprehend the linkages between health and behavior to meet societal needs (e.g. a more diverse and aging population that will receive most of its behavioral services in primary care settings). All psychologists must understand the mission and scope of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) as applicable to how we prepare psychology to provide direct clinical services, teach other disciplines about integrated mental health care, design research protocols, develop and evaluate behavioral services within medical settings, and serve as administrators and leaders in the health care field of tomorrow. Thus, I felt it only fitting that the last issue of the journal under my editorship focus on my passion, integrated primary care. Long before the enactment of the ACA, I oversaw a training model at the Eastern Virginia Medical School focused on training clinical psychology interns and B. Cubic (&) Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Eastern Virginia Medical School, 825 Fairfax Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23507, USA e-mail: cubicba@evms.edu