Minneapolis VA Health Care System

Minneapolis VA Health Care System > Education and Training > Psychology

The Training Setting

The Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System (VAHCS) is an affiliated teaching facility located at the southern edge of the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

It provides comprehensive inpatient, primary, secondary, and tertiary care in medical, surgical, neurological, rehabilitative, and short-term psychiatric modalities, primary and specialized ambulatory care and rehabilitative care. It has a current inpatient capacity of 279 acute care and 104 extended care beds. A new inpatient Spinal Cord Injury Program was completed this year and is now fully operational. This medical center is often described as a "flagship" and "center of excellence" in the VA system, with numerous specialized programs available and state of the art equipment.

The Minneapolis VAMC provides health care to veterans residing in our primary service area, which includes Western Wisconsin and Minnesota. It also serves as a tertiary referral center for the upper VA Midwest Healthcare Network which spans a much greater geographical area and includes some two million veterans. Last Last fiscal year, there were more than 600,000 outpatient visits, 8,200 inpatient stays, and nearly 1,000 extended care stays at this facility. Each of the outpatient visits may represent multiple encounters with multiple departments on the same day; hence, there are more than a million patient encounters yearly. The Minneapolis VAMC is one of four officially designated Lead Polytrauma Centers receiving and treating returning veterans with multiple traumatic injuries sustained in the course of the current conflict. Additionally, this medical center is one of eight in the VA system that houses a Women Veterans Comprehensive Health Center and the first VA to provide mammography for female veterans. Over 3,000 women are seen in this medical center annually.

In addition to the Psychology Training Programs, The Minneapolis VAHCS has one of the largest education and training programs in the VA system, with more than 1,500 students rotating through annually. It has active affiliations with 50 colleges, universities, and vocational schools in allied health professions, such as medicine, psychiatry, health care administration, audiology, speech pathology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, social work, psychology, laboratory and dental technology, physician assistants, nursing, and pharmacy. The Minneapolis VAHCS has particularly strong partnerships with the University of Minnesota in providing clinical services, training, and research across a variety of disciplines.

The Research Service located in the medical center is among the largest and most active in the VA System. There are currently 142 scientists and investigators. The VA Research funding for fiscal year 2011 was $30,233,448.

The Medical Center’s Mission: Honor America's veterans by providing exceptional health care that improves their health and well-being.

The Medical Center’s Vision: To be a patient centered, integrated health care organization for veterans providing excellent health care, research and education; an organization where people choose to work; a community partner and a back up for national emergencies.

The video "Excellence Through Learning, Discovery and Best Practices" was recently produced to highlight the MVAHCS's commitment to Education, Research, and Training.

The Presence of Psychology at the Minneapolis VAHCS

The VAHCS Psychology staff currently consists of 52 doctoral psychologists, nearly all of whom hold clinical faculty positions at the University of Minnesota and are involved in training. Each psychologist works in one or more of the specialized treatment units and acts as a member of a multidisciplinary treatment team and/or as a consultant to programs within that setting. The Psychology staff hold a diversity of interests, theories, and techniques in psychology and work in widely-varied programs with different kinds of patients. The training staff train eight interns yearly – five are in our general psychology track and two in the Neuropsychology track. There are also four postdoctoral residents, three in clinical psychology (SPMI, Rehabilitation/Polytrauma, and Mental Health/Primary Care emphases) and one in Clinical Neuropsychology. Five psychology technicians and three secretaries complete the staffing.

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