Yearly Archives: 2014

Research Spotlight: Where are they now?

In order to acknowledge all of the great psychology research APAGS members have conducted recently, we asked our funding recipients to share with us all of the important progress they have been able to accomplish with the support of the of APAGS and the APA Science Student Council (SSC).  

In the upcoming months we will be showcasing outstanding students whose research was made possible with the help of APA and SSC funding. The following students have demonstrated the utmost passion and creativity that APA looks for in its members and we love to see how their personal interests are inspiring the entire psychological science community.

 

spikeleeSpike Lee: Mind over Matter

“My colleagues and I have been exploring a number of quirky effects linking the mind and the body. What we consistently find is that social psychological processes are influenced by incidental bodily experiences that have no more than metaphorical relevance. For example,

  • Literally smelling something fishy makes people suspicious and invest less money in a trust game
  • After doing something unethical with their mouth, people want to rinse their “dirty mouth”; but after doing something unethical with their hands, people want to purify their “dirty hands”
  • People can metaphorically “wipe the slate clean” — an antiseptic wipe is sufficient to eliminate the classic free-choice dissonance effect

In addition, a few years back when swine flu was all over the place, we did a couple of fun studies by walking around town, sneezing and coughing. That was enough to change how people wanted the government to spend a billion dollars. The logic wasn’t new but the effects were surprisingly strong, given that it was “just a sneeze.””

 

Logan Fiorella: Learning by Teaching: The Role of Expectations and ExplanationsLogan Fiorella Bio Pic

It is often said that the best way to learn something new is to teach it to someone else.  My research aimed to explore this idea by testing the relative effects of preparing to teach and actually teaching on short- and long-term learning.

  •  In four experiments, college students studied a multimedia lesson on how a scientific process works with the expectation of later teaching or being tested on the material; some participants actually taught the material, whereas others only studied the lesson.
  •  Participants then completed a comprehension test either immediately or following a one-week delay… when tested following a one-week delay, only participants who actually taught the material experienced better learning outcomes.

These findings suggest that while preparing to teach leads to short-term learning benefits, the act of teaching is critical for long-term learning.

 

Michael Alosco: Where the Heart Is

mike alonso photoEarly research of mine has examined the impact of cognitive function on activities of daily living in older adults with heart failure. Support from APAGS has provided the opportunity to expand upon this line of research to help better understand the association between cognitive function and functional independence in cardiovascular disease patients.

  • For instance, recent work from our team suggest that heart failure patients may be at risk for unsafe driving and treatment non-adherence due to impairments in attention and executive function.
  •  In response to these findings, additional studies from our group have sought to identify possible mechanisms for cognitive impairment in persons with cardiovascular disease using advanced neuroimaging.

5 Lessons from Harry Potter to Deal with an Advisor who is Like Voldemort

Mattu, 2012

Mattu, 2011

So what do you do if your advisor is as evil as Voldemort?

Graduate school is full of enough challenges and hoops to deal with a toxic advisor. But just as Harry Potter was able to overcome Voldemort, you can graduate with your degree, if you think about the allies that Harry developed over the course of the series. These allies all taught him something important, and you can too by discovering people who are like them in your life.

1)     Get Hermione on your side – You need a smart peer on your side who can give you feedback on drafts of your proposal, or challenge you with tough questions before your defense. You want someone who can give you truly constructive criticism, without being mean about it.

2)     Find Ron – Everyone needs a best friend, with whom you can commiserate after a tough test or a difficult meeting with your advisor. Social support is so important on the journey to earning your degree! Find someone whom you trust.

El-Ghoroury, 2012

El-Ghoroury, 2012

3)     Seek Dumbledore – As the headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore often went out of his way to protect Harry (even if Harry didn’t know it). It helps to have an ally among the faculty in your department, particularly someone with some power, such as the department chair or the director of training. An ally who is well connected can be a buffer for you in your interactions with your advisor, particularly on committees.

4)     Discover Remus Lupin – While Remus Lupin was Harry’s teacher for one year, the most important thing he taught Harry (the “expect patronus” spell) was something he taught outside of class. Find a mentor who is not at your school who can be a source of support as well as instruction. Perhaps you can find a mentor from your undergraduate institution, or from a conference.

5)     Reach out to Sirius Black – Although his parents were deceased, Harry had a godfather, Sirius, who played an important role of loving Harry. Reach out to your parents or family for support in grad school, even if all they do is empathize with you and tell you it will get better.

If you can find these types of allies, you will be well on your way to handling a tough advisor.

There is just one last question to consider: Is your advisor Voldemort, or is he really Snape?

El-Ghoroury, 2012

El-Ghoroury, 2012

In the books, Harry is convinced that Snape is a bad guy and out to get him, but he learns in the final book that Snape had been protecting him the whole time he was at Hogwarts. Is your advisor really trying to harm you, or are the challenges he’s giving you merely lessons to make you a stronger psychologist?

If these allies don’t help, you may need to learn some spells. Expelliarmus!

 

Three Reasons Why Psychologists Belong in Healthcare Settings

By David Martin, PhD, ABPP (Senior Director, APA Office on AIDS)

For most of my early career as a psychologist, I felt like most professional psychologists IHIV Specialist Cover knew outside my healthcare setting thought what I did wasn’t psychology because (a) it wasn’t traditional psychotherapy, (b) my approach was behavioral, and (c) I was working in a healthcare setting practicing clinical health psychology.

The December 2013 issue of the HIV Specialist provides a great example of why psychologists belong in healthcare settings and how they can and should retain their identity as psychologists even if they aren’t engaging in traditional psychotherapy. While the issue was written for healthcare professionals in HIV care, I encourage you as graduate students in psychology to read it because:

  1. It shows an understanding that mental and physical health are inseparable. It represents an effort to inform (primarily) non-psychologist healthcare providers of the important roles that psychology can and should play in the management of HIV disease, as well as in education and prevention.
  2. It highlights the unique expertise of psychologists in the healthcare setting. Psychologists working in HIV/AIDS have essential skills that benefit the sick. WeHealthcare have expertise extending well beyond traditional psychotherapy into areas such as pain management, treatment adherence, rehabilitation, and other important facets of treatment. Although the articles were intended for non-psychologist healthcare providers, if you think you may be interested in work in HIV/AIDS, these articles may provide you with an overview of some of the issues and help provide additional guidance as you move forward in your education and training.
  3. It shows that psychologists are part of integrated healthcare’s future. Last year, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) reported data demonstrating the vital importance of integrated care in engaging and retaining people with HIV/AIDS in care. The issue illustrates implicitly how psychology can be useful in the context of healthcare in general, highlighting psychology’s role in the provision of integrated care. Many of the issues confronting people with HIV/AIDS mirror those of individuals facing other health challenges, and psychology can and should play a vital role in their management as well. Integrated healthcare is coming; these articles provide an illustration of what integrated healthcare can look like when psychology is included in the mix.

Check out these resources to learn more about psychology’s role in integrated healthcare:

Are you ready to rank? Seven tips from now until next week

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????If you are participating in APPIC’s internship match system, you have likely experienced a demanding few months. You may find yourself wondering if the exhaustion is a sign you did something right, or just the profession’s odd way of saying “thank you” for your hard work.

The good news is that the end of this process is in sight with just a few more hurdles to clear. Next up: Ranking. You have until Wednesday February 5th to submit your ranking lists for Phase I. Finally, something you can control. Feels good, right? Yeah right!

To help you in any way we can, APAGS compiled some tips for you, taken directly from the third edition of our Internship Workbook by Carol Williams-Nickelson, PsyD, Mitch Prinstein, PhD, and Greg Keilin, PhD.

  1. “The most important thing to remember is to simply rank internship programs in the order in which you want them. That is all you need to worry about” (p. 102). Rank the program you prefer most as number one, and so on.
  2. “Do not, under any circumstances, take into account such things as how you believe a site is ranking you, how well you think you have impressed a site, the feedback that you are getting from a site, and so forth” (p. 102). Even if a site violates Match policies and tells you that they’re ranking you their #1, if they are not your #1, don’t list them as such.
  3. The matching program is designed to favor you — to preference your needs and wishes — allowing you to rank sites as you would them, not the other way around. The system will strive to get you the highest ranked site possible from your list, not the other way around. A site will never learn where it stood on your list.
  4. Rank a site even if you’re not sure they will rank you. There is no penalty for doing so. The computer will skip over that site on your list with no reduction in changes of you actually matching. Even if you’ve learned from a site after you’ve submitted your rankings that they will not rank you, the same truism applies. No penalty.
  5. “You should submit [a Rank Order List] if you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure that you are ready to accept the internship to which you are matched” (p. 103). Because the decision is binding, you should think twice about ranking a site that you’d rather stay on campus instead of attending.
  6. The specific order of your rankings will only determine where you match, not whether you match (p. 80). In other words, if you match, it has nothing to do with your list. This also means that if you don’t match with list in ABCD order, you would not have matched with a list in BCDA order either.
  7. Remember when the lights went out on Beyonce’s halftime show at the Superbowl last year? Well, anything’s possible, including loss of electricity and internet. Don’t wait until the last minute! While you can change your mind and rank and recertify until the deadline, give yourself some peace of mind and celebrate knowing you got your choices in!

Best wishes. Breathe. Let us know in the comments what you are doing to take care of yourself this week!

Are we producing too many trainees for internship—but not enough for the nation?

The psychology workforce is a numbers game. Are we winning or losing? (Source: Numbers by Stimpdawg on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

The psychology workforce is a numbers game. But with the internship crisis, are we winning or losing? (Source: Numbers by Stimpdawg on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

Given that 1 in 4 students who enter the APPIC match do not actually match (and nearly 1 in 2 fail to match directly from APA accredited programs to APA accredited internships – see #11) it seems natural to entertain the idea that we have too many trainees. Or that we are producing too many psychologists who are flooding the market, cheapening the field, and so forth. But is any of this really true?

Researchers Parent and Williamson (2010) did find that some programs contribute disproportionately to the match imbalance by sending significantly more students on internship each year. That might be enough for some to jump to the conclusion that these programs are just too big. Although, I ask: too big for what?

See, I worry that the internship crisis is causing us to identify red herrings, or fake culprits. While lots of students are unequivocally a problem in the crucible of poor match rates and failed matches, this doesn’t say anything about the need for more or less psychologists in the workforce.

Whether you agree or disagree with Malcolm Gladwell, who said in his latest book that we should stop connecting class size with educational outcomes, it’s important to think through what a change in the number of healthcare providers means in the United States. As a baseline, I found that about 5,400 people sit annually for the EPPP, our profession’s licensing exam and on average, 3,800 pass the exam each year. And now I’ll provide three and a half data sources suggesting we may actually need more psychologists in years to come:

1)      New psychologists are finding jobs. According to the latest data we have available—the Doctorate Employment Survey (APA, 2011)—psychologists within one year of graduation had an unemployment rate of 6%, at least 2-3% points lower than the historical national average. More than two thirds of graduates had a job within the first three months of completing their programs and 72% said their current job was their first preference.

2)      NAMI estimates that 11 million people in the U.S. with mental illnesses lack insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act (better known to some as Obamacare), combined with our earlier Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, will bring more people than ever before into our nation’s insured healthcare system, almost certainly increasing demand for mental health services.

3)      As of January 1, 2014, the United States counted 3,896 known, designated mental healthcare professional shortages across the country. These are shortages of core professionals—psychologists included—that by definition cannot meet the basic mental health needs of whole geographic areas, specific facilities, and/or underserved groups before there are so few practitioners relative to the population. Every state has a demand for more mental health care in some way or other. 

3.5)     As of this month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates increased employment of 18,700 psychologists by 2022. They say, “Employment of clinical, counseling, and school psychologists is projected to grow 11 percent from 2012 to 2022, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Greater demand for psychological services in schools, hospitals, mental health centers, and social services agencies should drive employment growth.” Notes: This estimate doesn’t cleanly separate the need for doctoral-level psychologists from those with Masters training, and also includes non-health-service psychologists. This data point only gets a “3.5” instead of a standalone “4” because the newly released BLS numbers are not as strong as they were a month ago (a 2010 to 2020 projection), and I’m curious to see what this means for workforce demand. You can see how projections are calculated here.

If you are quick to ask for smaller class sizes, especially in light of the internship crisis, it is crucial that you have some understanding about how this could impact our nation’s ability to care for its people. For what appears to be a problem in one light may actually be a solution in another.

My data points are by no means a substitute for a workforce analysis, and one is needed to definitively answer the question: Just how many psychologists do we need?  (An even better analysis would tell us where in the country to send providers based on their training.) If we come to find that we actually need more psychologists than there are internship positions, what else can we do to responsibly get rid of this bottleneck in the internship match? That’s the real million dollar question.