Gerorges' Internship in Concepción

​  Internship 2015  

​At the internship I was warmly received by the young team of five colleagues (two psychologists, a social worker, an occupational therapist, and a drug specialist), who involved me in numerous activities. The center offers outpatient therapy for probationary adults with addictions. For about 1.5 years, 16 patients have been cared for twice a week. For some of the patients the therapy is part of the punishment and others come because their probation officer advises them to go.

Because I´m studying psychology, I have mainly accompanied the psychologists, could conduct diagnostic interviews, write the related reports, accompany and conduct intelligence tests (and write reports), support the art therapy, also accompany home visits, compile statistics and prepare and present topics for the team.
My work was from Monday to Friday from 9.30 to 18.00. Overall, I liked the respectful and humorous way, I could always ask questions and was included in all cases. I benefitted from the long working experience of my colleagues and of their interest about humans and their work. At the same time, I was able to bring in acquired knowledge, my experience and, for example, "typical" German procedures in diagnostic procedures.
Every Monday, we had a  team meeting , to discuss the week´s schedule and administration issues. In addition, all cases were briefly updated and particularly difficult ones analyzed.

Chile Inside
Previously, I was in contact with ChileInside, the communication went well by email and all my questions were answered. The internship exceeded my expectations and it was a “real” internship, good care and I was able to perform sophisticated psychological work.
Before my internship started,  I met my contact person  in Santiago, who gave me  a lot of information  about Santiago, which was very useful for my weekends, but for my stay in Concepción not so useful. The team and friends helped me a lot to find my way around. During my internship Chile Inside my contact person always wrote to me and wanted to know if I like my internship and if everything is all right. But everything was very good, so we didn´t have  much to talk about.
It turned out that, unfortunately, the description of the internship position was not quite correctly described, it is not about adolescent patients, but consistently adults. (Note from Chile Inside: Unfortunately, a translation error in the description. Instead of "young adults" we translated "teenagers.")

Conclusion
I benefitted a lot from  these  three months and it was very helpful for my future career. I acquired many new specific competencies (especially in the field of psychological diagnostics), got to know the possible working day of a psychologist and could seriously immerse myself in the formal work context.
After all, working in a different cultural context is an incomparable experience that has certainly also strengthened my interpersonal skills.

Here you will find information on internships in Chile.