Clinical Phd - Experience etc.

Vaughn616

Hi,

So I'm going into my final year at UCC as an undergrad and I simply don't know where to start getting clinical experience and I'm a little confused as to what masters would be usefull. Firstly would the Masters need to be accreddited? Also i know ones titles "Foundations for Clinical Psychology" etc. would be good to do, but what about ones mainly focused on psychopathology and atypical development? I've read that being a research assistant in clinical research is considered experience, but that also being a care assistant is??? This seems a bit weird as you'd have to get completely different qualifications to work as one! Plus I can't really afford to spend years doing extra qualifications until I'm accepted on a DClinPsych programme.

If anyone could answer these questions I would be very grateful.

Semele

For a start, you don't HAVE to do a masters to be eligible for a clinical doctorate. A lot of people do but the only time it's really a requisite is if your undergratuate degree was a 2:2 or very low 2:1, in order to prove that you have the academic capacity to do the doctorate. If you do decide to do a masters then it doesn't really matter what it is. If you specifically have an interest in neuropsychology, or forensic etc then do go for that, if not then there are many more generic ones like "Clinical applications..." or Research Methods.

In my own experience I would say that breadth is more useful at this stage (so a "generic" MSc may open more doors that an overly specific one). I did mine in Forensic, but kinda regret not having done something more universally relevant when it comes to applying for jobs in other fields. The only accredited masters are ones that constitute Stage one of training for a specific discipline in psychology such as health or forensic. An unaccredited masters is just as useful if it's clinical that you're interested in.

Experience-wise- it's highly unlikely that you'd get a research assistant or assistant psychologist job straight from your undergrad (not impossible obv, but v competitive). While they are top of the hierarchy of relevant experience positions, so to speak, anything where you work with a clinical population or in an environment where clinical psychologists work is valuable relevant experience (hence care work!).

Normally people end up doing care work or support work initially after they graduate and it is this combination of relevant educational qualifications and practical clinical experience that eventually gets you a more relevant position. But this lower-level work is valuable in itself and a significant minority of successful applicants to clinical doctorates have never held an AP or RA position. Courses are becoming increasingly open to applicants from non-traditional backgrounds such as this in their drive to increase the diversity of the profession(in the UK almost all AP and RA positions are relatively short fixed term contracts so it's not exactly a stable or feasible income for aspiring applicants who are less well off, have family committments etc).

My advice, from someone who graduated a few years ago, is that you should try to find relevant work for a year (don't worry about it not being AP or RA standard at this point, just see it as a foot on the ladder!), save some money, learn a bit more about the path to qualifying and then apply to MSc programmes. I did my masters straight after uni but think I would have got a lot more out of the experience if I'd had some practical experience of working in mental health to apply it to.

Vaughn616

Thanks so much for your reply it was very helpful . Do you have any suggestions on how to go about getting workin in a care setting?