Professional specialized training in Clinical Psychology is preceded by a pre-doctoral degree (Licenciatura = 5 years) in Psychology at the University. Once students obtain the degree in Psychology two different paths are available. Theoretically they are complimentary ways to attain specialized and professional training: Magister Degree courses and the Internship-System (Psicologo Interno Residente, PIR). The psychologist becomes a resident member of the staff of a hospital, acting as assistant and serving an apprenticeship under supervision. The PIR-system is closely linked to the public health service network.

Some Faculties of Psychology have created Institutes as a framework for a Magister Degree Program (for practitioners) or a Doctor Degree curriculum (for scholars).

Several Faculties offer Magister Degrees in the specialty of Clinical Psychology (Complutense University of Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla, Malaga, Barcelona and so on), although their content and duration are quite different. These differences are due, among other factors, to the absence of well-defined norms from the Council of Universities. Each Faculty establishes the graduate admission requirements, the infrastructure, academic contents, and the balance between practice and theory. Cost effectiveness is a vital part of the design and development of each Magister Degree Program (this is not the case in Doctor's degree curricula). At the end of the academic year each Magister Degree account must show, at least, a zero balance. Inaccurate figures damage the director's credibility and the continuity.

In our opinion, a possible way to systematize this kind of Magister Degrees would be to create a task-force chaired by the Colegio Oficial de Psicologos (C.O.P.), made up of qualified practitioners as well as university professors of Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology. The main mission of this task-force would be to study and, if deemed adequate, approve each Magister Degree proposal as well as carry out proper evaluations on them. As a consequence, accreditation of any particular Magister Degree would be guaranteed jointly by the C.O.P. and each University.

We shall now take a look at another complementary way to train specialists, which the C.O.P. has been demanding for a long time. We are talking about the Internship program,(Psicologos Internos Residentes PIR). It is a professional placement for graduates in Psychology which gives them an opportunity to utilize the relevant theory in practice and observe other experts in their work at the hospital (Lopez, 1990; Marquez, 1990; Perez, 1990). This system is analogous to the one successfully employed by the Ministries of Health and Education to train medical school graduates (MIR-System). The implementation of this model has been proposed, "to favour the inclusion of psychology, in its clinical branch, in the public health network, with the proper rank and status as well as to make analogous post-graduate specialist training with the predominant training system used in other health-area disciplines" (Colegio Oficial de Psicologos, 1989). Briefly, this model consists of professional qualification by rotation through the different areas and systems of the public health network. The supervision should be provided by those professionals in Clinical and Health Psychology who already have stable positions in the network.

This is an historical moment: practitioners are incorporated progressively into specialized Mental Health services, within the framework of a process of transformation in the Health sector (Carrasco & Garde, 1990). The option of choosing this kind of system implies the normalization of our specialty with regard to other experts with a similar specialist-training model (Physicians, Biologists, Pharmacists).

The possibility of this specialized professional training became official in 1977, by a governmental regulation. For the first time several PIR posts were created.

The PIR model has several advantages that cannot be found in Magister Degree Programs:

1. . It is directly linked to the specialized services of the health network, which permits establishing a balance between basic and applied research and evaluation, while taking into account society's demands on public services. Besides that, it should help the psychologist fit his instruments more adequately to the intervention field.
2. . It links post-graduate training to professional practice, not only because it includes professionals as trainers, but also because the speciality students get a temporary labour contract. The consequence is formal recognition within the workforce in the Health Sector.
3. . It favours and promotes the professional identity, internally and with other professional groups of other disciplines who work together, as a team, in common areas of intervention areas, and also with current customers.
4. . Practitioners become experts in the setting of a public or private Health organization.
5. . It helps Clinical Psychology gain official recognition as a health profession.
6. . It will permit the legal comparability of specialized psychologists, with regard to other post-graduate degrees of other health-area disciplines.
7. . It permits us to apply new criteria and methods, along the lines of the proposed health model, whereby resident students must pass through rotation circuits in differentiated specialized services of a certain territory.

We hope to achieve full regulation of this model within the framework of future legal regulation of Health Specialists.

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                           JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
                      
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psdife4@sis.ucm.es            
              LAST UPDATED Sunday 6 de August de 1995 - - 

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