Training Programs

Overview: Capacity Building

Capacity building refers to training programs specifically intended to bolster and support rehabilitation professionals who serve as a resource for interventions aimed at improving the well being of people with TBI. A primary goal of the RRTC is to build capacity within three professional groups who provide direct services to individuals with TBI, i.e., physicians, psychologists, and other providers in community-based service systems. These three groups were selected as they often are the gatekeepers for individuals with TBI, who can either ensure or delay timely identification, assessment, and appropriate interventions. Based on feedback from consumers and from prior work in clinical and community-based service systems, we found that professionals in community settings are frequently uninformed about TBI. As a result, individuals with TBI seen for services either remain unidentified and their TBI-based needs unaddressed, or the implications of their brain injury on their presenting problems are not understood sufficiently, if at all. To address these needs, the RRTC will target the training of primary gate keepers. A secondary element of the RRTC's capacity building activities focuses on educating postdoctoral researchers and researchers-to-be on the need for and methods for achieving better TBI-relevant studies.

To maximize capacity building efforts, we have adopted a "top down" and a "bottom up" approach. Top-down activities are targeted directly to practitioners: psychologists, physicians, and other direct service providers, employed not only in rehabilitation milieus (e.g., physiatry residents) but also in other clinical or community settings (e.g., clinics, private practice). Bottom-up activities are targeted at students in the process of career selection, as well as graduate and postgraduate students being trained in psychology or medicine. The top-down activities include intensive programs, such as postdoctoral fellowships and internships, as well as briefer programs and workshops. Two bottom-up approaches are used: curriculum development and intern/extern programs.