News

THE SPECIALIST

is published twice yearly by the American Board of Professional Psychology. We produce in electronic form for ease of distribution, access and reproduction. Please feel free to download your copies by clicking the links on the right side of this page.

Message from the President

Nadine J. Kaslow, Ph.D., ABPP

Envisioning the Future of ABPP

As a board certified psychologist in both clinical psychology and couple and family psychology, I am firmly committed to competency-based education and credentialing. Thus, the opportunity to serve at the helm of the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP), which is the only organization in the United States devoted to competency-based credentialing in 13 specialty areas in professional psychology, is truly an honor and a privilege. I am particularly pleased that during my presidency, we will hold the ABPP Continuing Education Conference, which will take place in Portland, Oregon, July 6-10, 2010. The event will be held at the Hilton Portland and Executive Tower. We have a wonderful line-up of speakers and I encourage everyone to join us.

Reviewing Our Recent Accomplishments

I want to thank Christine Maguth Nezu, PhD, ABPP for her courageous and dedicated leadership of ABPP over the past two years. It is remarkable what we accomplished during her presidency. Below is a list of some recent highlights:

· Moved our office to Chapel Hill, North Carolina
· Launched a wonderful new website
· Developed an ABPP Statement of Value
· Disseminated the early application program
· Held our first Meet and Greet reception at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) for training directors
· Secured interviews with key leaders in our organization for the American Psychological Association Graduate Student (APAGS) Newsletter
· Added the Diversity Committee as a Standing Committee of the Board of Trustees and enhanced our emphasis on diversity
· Developed a structure that allows for more flexibility in the relations between specialty boards and their associated academies
· Approved a policy for the examination of individuals who currently are in the military
· Approved a new ethics policy
· Created enhanced sources of revenue for our organization (a) Maguth Nezu, Finch, and Simon published Becoming board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, with Oxford University Press in 2009; and (b) Dr. Finch made progress toward the formation of a 5013C tax exempt fund (The ABPP Foundation, Inc)

Envisioning Our Future: ABPP in 2020

We will continue to build on these accomplishments as we move forward. In order to move forward, I led the BOT through a strategic planning exercise, called Envisioning Our Future, at our December 2009 meeting.

Our vision for the decade is that there be a culture shift within the profession, such that board certification in psychology has the same status and level of expectation as board certification in medicine, that board certification by ABPP is the expected standard for specialty practice in professional psychology at the entry level, and that the public recognizes ABPP as the premiere body for specialty board certification and evaluation of the maintenance of competence. It is hoped that board certification by ABPP is expected by all organizations that hire and employ psychologists and by all groups that credential psychologists, that there is differential pay and reimbursement for ABPP board certified psychologists, and that students learn the value from their educators and trainers that board certification is the endpoint and they view board certification as accessible to them. Moreover, during the next ten years, ABPP will have strong senior partnerships with all relevant professional organizations. And finally, the ABPP Central Office will have the resources needed to provide comprehensive service and to support to all relevant constituencies.

We agreed upon the following six strategic initiatives in 2010-2011 to help us reach our 2020 vision: (1) As a BOT and with the input of our specialty boards and academies, we will agree upon a soft target for number of new board certified psychologists and work toward that goal. (2) We will increase our efforts to partner with the most likely education, credentialing, and student groups to increase number of board certified psychologists and the value of board certification. (3) We will continue to strive to communicate the ABPP message through multiple venues. (4) We will craft an internal document and blueprint to help specialty boards be more successful and to communicate most effectively with the public. (5) We will develop a cadre of ambassadors engaged in moving forward the ABPP agenda and create talking points for them. (6) We will devise strategies to help ABPP gain greater public recognition and improve its public relations.

To this end, we have created six task groups that will be comprised of members of the ABPP BOT: (1) Education and credentialing community plan, (2) Communication plan, (3) Specialty board plan, (4) Ambassador plan, and (5) Public recognition and relations plan. We welcome participation of other members of the ABPP community in these efforts.

I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborating with the members of the ABPP BOT, the specialty boards, the academies, all ABPP board certified specialists, the ABPP Central Office staff, and other relevant constituency groups over the next two years. I look forward to receiving your feedback and input and dialoguing with you about issues of mutual interest and concern. I hope to engage each of you as partners in ABPP’s forward trajectory. Please feel free to contact me at nkaslow@emory.edu with your feedback and suggestions.

Executive Officer Update

David R. Cox, Ph.D., ABPP

California State Hospitals request ABPP workshop

This year I had the opportunity to visit with the psychology departments of each of the hospitals in the State of California Department of Mental Health (DMH) in order to present on competency in psychology and the ABPP. The visits arose following a call from a hospital in which it was indicated that many of the psychologists there had an interest in pursuing board certification through ABPP. It turned out that the group was no small lot; 70 some psychologists at that one facility. One discussion led to another and before I knew it ABPP had been asked to present to each of the five hospitals. Across the hospital system, there are some 300+ psychologists, and several reported that the staff size was positioned to increase significantly over the next year or two. Not all of the psychologists were interested, nor ready, to pursue board certification; however many were. Since that visit, ABPP Central Office has seen a number of applications come through, from different hospitals in the DMH system. Perhaps more importantly, the California DMH is setting a standard that perhaps other such systems will follow – encouraging education about, if not pursuit of, board certification through ABPP.

The workshop presented was not solely about ABPP. Rather, it focused on the Culture of Competency in Professional Psychology, with emphasis on the development of competencies as worked on by the various workgroups within and across APA, APPIC, ABPP and other professional organizations. A developmental history was presented, including an outlining of competency areas and the integration of that into ABPP’s model of competency examination. It was well received and, as one might expect of a topic of this nature, could have gone yet more in depth than the two hour time slot that we allotted for each site.

The California state hospitals all house individuals who have been involved in the legal system, yet not all of the psychologists working their view their specialty as forensic psychology. The variety of interests included clinical psychology, forensic psychology, clinical neuropsychology, rehabilitation psychology and cognitive and behavioral psychology. I was particularly impressed with the vision and enthusiasm that the leaders of each group of psychologists had – they were all keenly interested in making sure that their departments got information about advances in psychology, genuinely encouraged staff to attend the workshop provided and asked about return visits in the future to provide similar information to new staff psychologists. This was a dedicated group of psychologists who clearly hold quality service and professionalism in high regard. They are to be commended for their interest in establishing a culture of competence within their settings!

Russian Psychologists Visit ABPP Central Office

ABPP Central Office was one of several sites that psychologists from Russia asked to visit while in the United States learning about licensing, credentialing and professional psychology. The purpose of their trip was to study the system of licensing and certification used in the United States for professional psychologists so that they might implement a similar system in the Russian Federation. As well, they hoped to learn about the educational and training system for psychologists in the United States. The group met with ABPP, APA, ASPPB, the National Register, the State of North Carolina Psychology Licensing Board, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and others.

They visited the ABPP Central Office on March 5, 2009 and I spent several hours talking with them about various aspects of psychology training, licensure and the ABPP board certification process. They were very interested in our models of credentialing and eager to learn. It was interesting to realize how much emphasis we place on maintaining our high standards of quality and consumer protection – almost taking them for granted, while other countries may not even have basic licensure models adequately in place. We have a lot to learn from one another as psychology becomes more globalized. The visitors from Russia were:

Dr. Sergey Alekseyevich Manichev is the Chair, Department of Ergonomics and Engineering Psychology, School of Psychology, St. Petersburg State University. He holds a Ph.D. with a specialization in Engineering Psychology. He was elected to be the Director General of the newly established National Institute for Certification of Professional Psychologists (its registration is in the process now), St. Petersburg, Russia. He was asked to help establish the National Institute for the Certification of Professional Psychologists and become its Director General, at the request of the General Committee of the Russian Psychology Society. Dr. Manichev graduated from the School of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University where he is currently the Chair of the Department of Ergonomics and Engineering Psychology. He serves as a researcher and consultant in organizational development.

Mrs. Natalia Olegovna Mastinen is the Chief Manager, National Institute for Certification of Professional Psychologists, St. Petersburg, Russia. She has three Specialist degrees (equivalent to U.S. Master’s degree) including degrees in management and psychology. She is responsible for management of the National Institute for Certification of Professional Psychologists. The Institute is just beginning the process registration, and Mrs. Mastinen is responsible for creation of certification policies, principles, and rules. Much of this will be established based on what she and the others learn from their visits with foreign entities such as ABPP. Her role includes cooperative interaction with foreign institutions, representing the National Institution for Certification of Professional Psychologies, and managing the National Institute. Responsible for the day-to-day management of the Institute, her education and experience are in the fields of management and psychology.

Dr. Larisa Aleksandrovna Tsvetkova is the Dean of the School of Psychology at St. Petersburg State University. She holds a Specialist Degree (equal to a Master's Degree) and Ph.D. from the School of Psychology, St. Petersburg State University. As the Dean of the School of Psychology, Dr. Tsvetkova administers it, participates in the management of St. Petersburg State University, and teaches at the School. She is an active participant in the process of establishing the National Institute for the Certification of Professional Psychologies in Russia. She is also the First Vice President of the Russian Psychology Society. Dr. Tsvetkova leads two projects whose goals are to develop preventative measures aimed towards reducing behavioral anomalies. "Preventing Abnormalities in Children's Neurodevelopment" is a project that has been sponsored by the National Institute of Health of the United States since 2003 and is conducted together with the University of Oklahoma. Another project in which she is involved is dedicated to developing methods for creating programs that promote a healthy life style, prevent diseases, and encourage the student health and safety.

Web Site update

You are reading this on the new ABPP web site! This is a beginning of the new look that we will be continually developing for the ABPP web site. We are getting there! After a rocky road with a web developer, the ABPP Executive Committee elected to “change horses mid-stream”. This tact appears to be serving us well. We have a new look to our yet-to-be-launched redesign that will be integrated with an association management software package that hold promise for much improvement! The integrated association management software promises the opportunity for setting up personal logins for each ABPP specialist so that you can provide updates to your contact information when needed, set up online registration for events (such as the ABPP 2010 Convention to be held in Portland July 2010) and avail yourself of other opportunities in the future. With the capabilities of the web and related software we hope to begin implementation of online continuing education opportunities, list-servers and perhaps blogs, and set up portals for communications among Specialty Board reviewers and more. The association management software was selected following discussion with the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB), who, thanks to the close and collegial relationship we maintain with them, also kindly lent us their one of their key staff members, Ms. Amy Hilson (Thanks, Amy and ASPPB!) for a few days to help us learn from their experience with the system.

Meeting Attendance and Inter-organizational Activity

Many times, I find myself in need of being reminded that many of the day-to-day activities in which I and others engage in on behalf of ABPP are not necessarily something of which you may be aware; yet we may take for granted. Some of this includes participation in many key psychology meetings and conferences that keep ABPP in the forefront of psychology and our colleagues in other organizations. Personally, I find myself having established relationships with people in those organizations that are mutually beneficial which is, of course, one of the desired goals. Moreover, the relationships with many of these high-quality people help keep the organizational work interesting, energized and even fun!

A prime example of that is the above-mentioned interaction with the ASPPB. Our (ABPP’s) relationship with ASPPB is a very strong one and we interact fairly regularly with them on various issues. You may or may not have noticed over the years, but ABPP and ASPPB are most often located proximal to one another at APA Convention; that is not by chance alone! Nancy McDonald of ABPP Central Office and Amy Hilson of ASPPB have a long-standing professional relationship that serves both organizations well, and our relationship with ASPPB has for many years included having a representative attend their board meetings.

I joked recently with some colleagues that ABPP and ASPPB needed to share a jet, as we spend so much time traveling to the same locales. I represented ABPP at the recent APPIC meeting in Portland, Oregon, where I co-presented with the Judy Hall of the National Register and Emil Rodolfa and Carol Webb of ASPPB on credentialing. The following week in Boston at the ASPPB meeting several of us emailed back and forth with others who were not present to decide that it was in everyone’s best interest to cancel the scheduled meeting of the Council of Credentialing Organizations in Professional Psychology, which was scheduled for the next week in Mexico City.

In addition to the APPIC and ASPPB meetings, I attend the APA Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice (CAPP) meetings, the APA State Leadership Committee (SLC), APA Council of Representatives meeting and the APA Consolidated Meetings (where I primarily focus on the Board of Professional Affairs activities). In addition, ABPP President Christine Nezu has represented us recently at the National Multicultural Conference & Summit in January and presented an invited address to the psychologists at the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Conference in March.

It is our desire for ABPP to be a participant in those areas of psychology where ABPP presence and interaction can be of mutual benefit in advancing the profession and protecting the consumers of psychological specialty services. It is not just me, staff and the Board of Trustees that represent ABPP. Many others also represent ABPP – Dr. Jim Besyner recently was in attendance at a meeting of the Department of Veterans Affairs where ABPP was well represented and Dr. Pat DeLeon apparently encouraged the psychologists in attendance to seek ABPP board certification. No doubt many of you also take your participation in professional meetings somewhat for granted at times. If you know of meetings or groups that you think need to be added to our list (the above is by no means intended to be exhaustive), please let us know. Furthermore, if you are engaged in such activities and being of service to ABPP in some way, however small you may think it is, please let us know!