Description of Counseling Department

The main objective of the Department of Counseling, Career Guidance and Informing Students (DCCGIS) is the pursuit of new opportunities for professional integration and the appropriate choice of a medical specialty/ career, through educational coaching, psychological counseling and career guidance for students at the George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science, and Technology of Targu Mures. Within these activities, students will learn how to make effective decisions and to increase their academic motivation. To facilitate this process, emphasis will be placed on the importance of identifying personal values ​​and personality traits, combined with learning effective strategies for coping with the stress generated during the academic path. 

Psychologists in the department provide students with psychological services according to the DCCGIS rules of organization and operation, as follows:

1. Educational coaching

It is an intervention based on a collaborative, personalized and goal-oriented process, in which the student is supported in setting and achieving goals related to the academic activity. The particularity of this approach consists in identifying and developing the student's strengths and abilities, generally by using techniques for problem-solving and increasing motivation.

2. Career counseling and guidance

Assessment of the student's personality profile by using validated, standardized and reliable personality inventories/ psychological tests, approved by the Romanian College of Psychologists (CPR), in order to acknowledge personality dimensions, which can guide the student in choosing a medical specialty/ profession.

3. Psychological counseling

It involves an initial assessment stage to identify the student's level of distress in relation to academic challenges, followed by setting specific goals for reducing distress through learning adaptive emotional regulation techniques and increasing psychological flexibility, which facilitates the management of dysfunctional negative emotions that may affect academic performance.

4. Psychotherapy

It is addressed to students in situations of existential crisis, or whose functionality is deeply affected by the manifestation of a wide range of psychological disorders (anxiety, depression). These will be managed through psychotherapeutic protocols developed for reducing the specific symptoms of each disorder.

All these services will be provided by psychologists according to the rules of organization and operation of DCCGIS: UMFST-REG-48_EN