Jennifer Harsh, Ph.D., assistant professor and director of the program in the UNMC Division of General Internal Medicine, recently received approval to expand the Behavioral Medicine Program in the division.
The program provides psychosocial care for patients and their families and education for internal medicine residents on behavioral, emotional and social aspects of health care.
“We currently have a team that consists of myself, one doctoral level and three master’s level medical family therapy interns,” Dr. Harsh said. “We are hopeful that next year we will be able to recruit an additional doctoral intern to assist with clinical care, teaching residents and conducting research.”
The goal is to have a doctoral internship experience consisting of a pre-doctoral year that rolls directly into a post-doctoral fellowship which would expand teaching and research and increase patient access to behavioral health care.
Dr. Harsh said doctoral interns provide patient care, supervise, teach residents, publish and make presentations.
UNMC houses the only internal medicine program in the nation to offer doctoral-level training specifically for medical family therapists which also enables them to work in academic and supervisory roles following their training at UNMC.
Providers in the program conduct more than 200 patient encounters each month through the Patient Centered Medical Home model of care at Fontenelle and Midtown Clinics. With the ability to provide brief psychosocial interventions during medical visits, patients have access to psychosocial support in a way that fits with their specific schedule and set of needs, Dr. Harsh said.
“Our model of care greatly increases the chance that patients will receive much-needed behavioral health services,” Dr. Harsh said.
Tom Tape, M.D., division chief, said the behavioral medicine team allows patients to receive access to evidence-based psychosocial care and provides residents with the opportunity to participate in education aimed at enhancing the patient-provider relationship and recognizing the importance of psychosocial aspects of patient health and illness.
Debra Romberger, M.D., chair of the UNMC Department of Internal Medicine, said she is excited about the growth of the program and the additional patient care, education and scholarly activity that will accompany it.