The Setting

The Psychology Division in Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry is in its 27^th year of training postdoctoral fellows in clinical psychology, and has designated itself as a postdoctoral training program since 1984.  The program received its APA accreditation in 1997, and was one of the first three APA-accredited post-doctoral fellowships in the United States.

Our post-doctoral fellowship operates in a setting that is rich in the traditions of public service, education, and research.  Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a 340-bed general hospital owned and operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Health and Human Services and affiliated with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  Its 300-square mile catchment area runs from Los Angeles International Airport to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and encompasses 17 municipalities, as well as unincorporated areas.  Its service population of over 2.2 million people is economically, culturally, and ethnically diverse, and the poor and under-served comprise the majority of the medical center’s workload.

Harbor-UCLA is a tertiary medical center, providing emergency and trauma care and a full spectrum of medical and surgical inpatient and primary and specialty outpatient care, including cardiovascular surgery, intensive and acute respiratory care, family medicine, general internal medicine, gynecology, neurology, obstetrics, pediatrics, perinatal care, radiation therapy, and renal transplants.  In Fiscal Year 2006-07, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center had 22,777 inpatient admissions, 288,664 ambulatory visits, and 68,417 emergency room visits (including 59,972  medical visits and 8,445 psychiatric visits).  Its annual operating budget is $572 million.

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a Level I Trauma Center.  It is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), certified by the California Children’s Services (CCS), and accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP).  It has been designated an Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics (EDAP) and a Pediatric Critical Care Center (PCCC).

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has residency-education programs in all medical and surgical specialties and an international reputation as a premier teaching hospital.  It has 362 full- and part-time faculty physicians, all of whom have faculty appointments with the David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as 516 volunteer faculty physicians.

In addition to hospital operations, the Department of Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center operates an ambulatory service that includes Adult Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and HIV Mental Health Divisions.  The Ambulatory Service is funded through the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.  In FY 2006-07, the Ambulatory Service delivered approximately 54,775 client contacts for a total of 98,632 hours of service to 2,540 clients.

Through its affiliation with the Los Angeles Biomedical  Institute (LABioMed), many Harbor-UCLA faculty conduct research projects in the areas of AIDS/HIV, cardiology, diabetes, emergency medicine, kidney disease, oncology, maternal-fetal medicine, pediatrics, psychology, and women’s health.  LABioMed is the largest independent, not-for-profit biomedical research institute in Los Angeles County and has an international reputation for scientific discovery, physician-scientist training, and the provision of community service programs.  It is affiliated with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, with an annual budget of $60 million.  All extramurally-funded projects at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center are administered by LABioMed with funding from federal, state, industry, and private endowment sponsors, and currently more than 1000 research projects are underway.  LABioMed also administers over 60 community-service programs meeting social and medical needs.

The Psychology Division falls administratively in the Department of Psychiatry.  The Psychiatry Department has had a psychiatry residency training program since 1960. Currently there are 6  child fellows and 29 psychiatry residents training in the department.  The department’s faculty consists of 35 UCLA in-house faculty members, (24 psychiatrists and 13 psychologists) and over 40 volunteer psychiatrists and psychologists from the community who hold UCLA clinical appointments.  The Department also serves as a social work internship training site and a preceptorship site for nurse practitioners.