Training Sites

The Medical College of Georgia (MCG) - Augusta, GA
The Medical College of Georgia is the health university of the University System of Georgia. It operates five professional schools having a total enrollment of approximately 2500 students. The School of Medicine, now over 150 years old, is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States.

MCG Hospital and Clinics
The primary teaching facilities of MCG are a 483-bed hospital, the MCG Specialty Care Center, the MCG Ambulatory Care Center, and the Children's Medical Center (CMC). MCG Hospital and Clinics comprise more than 80 specialty clinics and a Specialized Care Center housing a 13-county regional trauma center. The hospital has a full range of medical and surgical services and in 2001 admitted 12,782 patients, while 364,051 patient contacts were made in the MCG clinics for the year 2001. The primary and secondary catchment areas for MCG encompass 108 of the 159 predominantly rural counties in the state of Georgia. Over a quarter of the patients served by the MCG Hospital and Clinics live in predominantly rural and medically underserved counties (31 of the 44 HPSA Designated Primary Medical Care shortage areas in Georgia). The MCG Hospital and Clinics serve a high proportion of indigent patients with 32-36 percent Medicaid supported and 8-13 percent with self-supported or no pay status in the year 2001. At the MCG Hospital, the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior operates a 20 bed Adult Unit, and a 14 bed Child/Adolescent Unit. The CMC houses a pediatric emergency room, operating suite, 16-bed pediatric intensive care unit and 96 medical/surgical beds with a full range of medical and surgical services. In 2001, 3,786 patients were admitted into the CMC. Data pertaining to payor mix and catchment areas for the CMC are incorporated in the general MCG data reported above.

The MCG Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic
The MCG Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic serves approximately 3500 to 4000 patients each year, approximately 35 percent of the patients are children and adolescents and 64 percent are adults. Eighty percent of patient contacts have been with Caucasian patients, 20 percent have been with African American patients, and 1 percent has been Hispanic. The clinic serves a high proportion of indigent patients with 30-40 percent Medicaid supported and 10-15 percent with self-supported or no pay status. The clinic's catchment area extends to many of the MHMRSA Region 5 counties that are federally designated mental health underserved areas counties (8 of the 23 are HPSA Designated Primary Medical Care shortage areas and 6 counties are HPSA Designated Mental Health Care shortage areas). Clinical services are organized under three interdisciplinary teams of care, two of which provide interdisciplinary training for the psychology residents: (1) Child, Adolescent, and Family Psychiatry and (2) Behavioral Health. The program teams generally consist of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, educators or nurses.

The Charlie Norwood Veteran Affairs Medical Center - Augusta, GA
The Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center (VAMC) is a two-division Medical Center that provides tertiary outpatient and inpatient services in medicine, surgery, neurology, psychiatry, rehabilitation medicine, and spinal cord injury. The Downtown Division is authorized 155 beds (58 medicine, 37 surgery, and 60 spinal cord injury). The Uptown Division, located approximately three miles away, has 68 psychiatry beds, 72 intermediate care beds, 60 domicilary beds, 10 rehabilitation medicine beds and 15 blind rehabilitation beds. In addition, a 60-bed Nursing Home Care Unit is located at the Uptown Division. The primary service area for the VAMC includes 17 counties in Georgia and South Carolina, and approximately 40,000 veterans are served. The VAMC serves as a regional resource for the treatment of spinal cord injury, post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, blind rehabilitation and general psychiatry. Psychologists at the VAMC provide treatment, consultation, education, research, administration, and leadership on the multidisciplinary teams to which they are assigned. Some of the psychologists direct or co-direct key treatment programs within the hospital. Most major subspecialties of professional psychology are represented on the staff, including clinical psychology, counseling psychology, neuropsychology, geropsychology, medical psychology, rehabilitation psychology, and psychology research. Both VA hospitals are modern facilities with pleasant work and treatment settings. Medical and psychological records are paperless, and are created and accessed by computer. There are up-to-date facilities for computer-automated psychological testing and videotaping of individual and group sessions. Psychologists direct and coordinate many treatment programs.


Both the VA and MCG have medical libraries that have broad reference and computer resources available for Residents. Both libraries have comprehensive print reference collections, indexes and abstracts, book collections and a broad range of current journal titles. These libraries offer an extensive public computing area with access to electronic and Internet resources and programs for word processing, spreadsheets, graphics and others. Electronic databases are available at all Resident workstations to provide access to the local collections of the University System of Georgia, MEDLINE and other health-related databases, as well as links to full-text journal articles. The VA also has a selection of full-text journals available on-line. The Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at MCG maintains its own virtual library enabling on-line access to scientific journals relevant to psychology/psychiatry. Generally, Residents maintain their own private offices for each rotation, although some rotations have Residents share office space and use sign-in rooms for patient care activities. All supervising faculty/staff offices are on the training sites, insuring ready access for Resident supervision. The proximity of the training sites enhances the opportunities for blending MCG and VAMC training site experiences within each week. Residents are assigned pagers and institutional e-mail addresses for the year and Residents have access to personal computer workstations and telephones for all rotational sites throughout the year.

Other Affiliated Training Sites
Healthy Grandparents Project of Augusta is supported by the Georgia Department of Human Resources Safe and Stable Families Program and the MCG School of Nursing. This program promotes health and wellness in grandparent-headed families, assists families to access available resources, and facilitates maintaining the children in a stable home. Held in a local community center, Henry Brigham Center, 42 families with 82 children are currently enrolled that are predominantly African-American and indigent. Nursing practitioners and social workers provide the supportive services and in the proposed project psychology faculty and residents would provide consultation and psychoeducational treatments.

Program Organization