The evolution of health care: Implications for the training and careers of psychologists.

Congress failed to pass legislation in 1994, but the general principles guiding reform are clearly embedded in state-level legislation and the inexorable movement toward managed care in the private employer–insurer markets. These principles, legislated by statute or realized incrementally through private market reforms, present challenges and opportunities to psychology as a science and a profession. Psychologists must significantly modify the way they currently work, and university-based training programs must modify the way they educate future psychologists. The issues go beyond the dominant concern with benefit plan coverage and professional prerogatives and affect the very organizational structures in which psychologists work and the ways they get paid. Psychologists now share with every health-related science and profession the public's demand for research-based evidence of cost-effective solutions to individual and community-wide health problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational controls and leadership.

Organizations are complex systems that, like all other systems, require internal control mechanisms for self-regulation and balance. Such controls also have direct and hidden financial and human costs. Designing control systems in professional service organizations can be especially challenging due to the need for case-by-case flexibility and the values of professionals for autonomy and other prerogatives. Leaderships must continuously assess the benefits to be gained by certain controls against their financial and human costs. The mix of control mechanisms and the way they are used over time will be contingent on the turbulence and complexity of the agency's environment. The ability of the agency to influence its environment will rest on the skills of its leadership. The conflict between flexibility and control will be particularly troublesome for human service organizations in the future, as the greater diversity of human problems and professional solutions meets the limitations of social values and governmental involvement. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A symposium on evaluation of training for consultation.

Papers from a symposium during the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Montreal in 1973 describe programs for training students to consult in a variety of settings with a variety of goals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)