Facilitating best practices in practicum training in clinical neuropsychology: introducing the North American Association of practicum sites in neuropsychology (NAPSN) organizational training guidelines

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The North American Association of Practicum Sites in Neuropsychology (NAPSN) was established in 2023 to support external practicum programs in urban, suburban, and rural areas in the United States and Canada by providing resources for member practicum programs and supporting prospective and current neuropsychology practicum students in collaboration with doctoral training programs. This article describes the development of and documents the current NAPSN organizational training guidelines for member programs. METHOD: A NAPSN training guidelines subcommittee was formed, consisting of six practicing clinical neuropsychologists who supervise practicum students across a variety of patient populations (i.e. adult, pediatric, lifespan), practice settings (e.g. academic medical center, Department of Veterans Affairs, hospital-based, private practice) and types (e.g. clinical, mixed clinical and forensic, mixed clinical and research), and geographic regions (e.g. urban, suburban, rural) to ensure sufficiently broad perspectives were incorporated. RESULTS: Incorporating best practices for supervision in neuropsychology, existing position statements on practicum training in neuropsychology, and recently revised, profession-wide training guidelines, four core content areas were established through consensus discussion: 1) Supervised experience of clinical practice activities; 2) Didactics/educational programming; 3) Professionalization; 4) Research. Guidelines were drafted for each respective content area. Following multiple internal rounds of revision among the subcommittee, these guidelines were presented to the NAPSN Board of Directors and Elected Officers and underwent additional rounds of revision to arrive at the final guidelines. CONCLUSION: The NAPSN training guidelines were established not as prescriptive rules/standards but rather are designed to function as supportive guidelines for NAPSN member programs to facilitate high-quality and effective training at the practicum level by allowing for maximum flexibility to account for the range of existing practicum training settings and experiences.