Early Career Boot Camp: A Novel Mechanism for Enhancing Early Career Development for Psychologists in Academic Healthcare

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe a pilot mentoring program for Early Career Psychologists (ECPs) working in Academic Health Centers (AHCs) and synthesize the lessons learned to contribute to future ECP and AHC career development training programs. The authors describe an early career development model, named the Early Career Boot Camp. This intensive experience was conducted as a workshop meant to build a supportive network and to provide mentorship and survival tools for working in AHCs. Four major components were addressed: professional effectiveness, clinical supervision, strategic career planning, and academic research. Nineteen attendees who were currently less than 5 years post completion of doctoral graduate programs in psychology participated in the program. The majority of boot camp components were rated as good to excellent, with no component receiving below average ratings. Of the components offered within the boot camp, mentoring and research activities were rated the strongest, followed by educational activities, challenges in AHCS, and promotion and tenure. The article describes the purpose, development, implementation, and assessment of the program in detail in an effort to provide an established outline for future organizations to utilize when mentoring ECPs.

Academic career development: A review and research agenda

“…Kram, 1985) has received a great deal of attention in the literature on academic career development. Mentoring is often examined in combination with the topics of gender (e.g., Schmidt & Faber, 2016) or age/career stage (e.g., Foran-Tuller et al, 2012). We identified two recent articles that adopted theoretical approaches to understand the role of mentoring for academic career development.…”

Barriers to and facilitators of success for early and Mid‐Career professionals focused on bipolar disorder: A global needs survey by the International Society for Bipolar Disorders

“…The EMCC Needs Assessment Workgroup met to identify domains relevant for EMCs. Based on an initial literature review, [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Through an iterative and collaborative process, final items were selected to balance survey length with the granularity of information to be collected. The goal was for the survey to take approximately 15 minutes.…”

Seven Ways of Looking at a Data Set

“…Most of the others referenced some aspect of human culture: sports ("marathon sessions"), games ("like rearranging a jigsaw"), travel ("the mind simply roams"), music ("I like to get into a rhythm"), arts and crafts ("I feel like a sculptor chiseling out my manuscript"), food consumption ("feast or famine"), schooling ("trial and error were my main tutors"), shipping ("clear the decks"), construction ("I work on different projects in blocks"), machines ("I am aware of getting rusty when I don't write"). Notably missing were the images of military discipline ("boot camps") and religious devotion ("cloisters," "congregations") that dominate much of the productivity literature (see, for example, Foran-Tuller et al, 2012, andStaller, 2013, on boot camps;Rogers, 2005, on cloisters;Boice, 1990, p. 124, on congregations). The academics we surveyed picture themselves sparking, flowing, traveling, building-not storming sandbags with a bayonet or rising at dawn to kneel on a cold floor.…”