Creating Internships and Potential Jobs for Medical Family Therapists: Lessons Learned.

As the field of collaborative and integrated medicine grows, family therapy and other behavioral science training programs are expanding to offer courses in medical family therapy. These courses and certificate training programs offer students experience that allows them to successfully integrate their skills into a medical setting. One significant element of this training focuses on the cultural differences between a medical clinic and a mental health clinic. Professional assumptions, when ignored or beyond awareness, can easily interfere with appropriate and valuable patient care. In this article, the authors describe the formation and implementation of a postgraduate training certificate in medical family therapy at Seattle Pacific University, with particular focus on internship development. The authors weave in the key questions addressed and answered as the program took shape and grew in its first 5 years of implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]