Commentary: Routh Early Career Award: Confessions of an Early Career Psychologist

Growing up, I always wanted to be a doctor; I just did not expect to be the kind of doctor I am today. As the sister of a long-term survivor of pediatric osteosarcoma, I learned what it was like for a family to cope with a life-threatening childhood illness. Although still fascinated by medicine, my experiences led me in a new direction. I wanted to understand people’s experiences as they were treated for, and moved forward from, a serious medical condition. What makes some kids and families cope better than others? And how can we help kids and families thrive despite medical challenges?

I am deeply honored to receive the Routh Early Career Award from the Society of Pediatric Psychology (SPP). I share this award with incredible mentors who have inspired and guided me along the way: Ron Blount, PhD, Grayson Holmbeck, PhD, OJ Sahler, MD, Bob Noll, PhD, Laura Mee, PhD, and Sharon Manne, PhD. These people have generously given me their time and shared their expertise, and I am eternally grateful for all they have done. Each mentor has served different roles for me during my training and early career, and just as other recent Routh Early Career Award recipients have noted, these mentors have been invaluable in helping me become the psychologist I am today (Berlin, 2014; Holley, 2014; Simons, 2013). SPP is my professional “home,” and I am thankful that it has created a culture in which mentorship and trainee opportunities are highly valued. As I reflect on my professional journey thus far, I will “confess” about the challenges I have faced along the way and share some of the sage advice from mentors to overcome such challenges.

Confession 1: It takes time to find a niche. Although I knew I wanted to be a pediatric psychologist and help kids and families cope better with chronic illnesses, I started graduate school with an open mind about what pediatric populations and issues I wanted to address. I was drawn to Dr. Ron Blount’s lab at the University of Georgia because of his expertise in pediatric pain. As a graduate student, Ron encouraged me to pursue diverse clinical and research opportunities in pediatric psychology. Through clinical experience, I found a passion for working with adolescent solid organ transplant recipients and received the 2007 Routh Student Research Grant to complete my dissertation focusing on health-related quality of life and adherence in this population. I developed strong collaborations with Ron and his other students and continue to publish with them. After graduate school, I pursued a 2-year postdoctoral research fellowship at Loyola University Chicago under the mentorship of Grayson Holmbeck, PhD. By working with a new population of youth with spina bifida, I learned an enormous amount about the intersection of developmental psychology and pediatric psychology. It was also my first opportunity for focused writing time. Under the guidance of a prolific mentor, I learned a lot about the writing and publishing process, and even got my first first-author publication in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology (JPP; Devine, Wasserman, Gershenson, Holmbeck, & Essner, 2011). This experience piqued my interest in working with adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients, and helped me better incorporate a developmental perspective into my research.

After completing my postdoctoral fellowship, I obtained a position as a research assistant professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center Cancer Control Training Program. Although passionate about pediatric oncology owing to my personal experience, I had purposefully avoided research in this area out of fear that it might be challenging to divorce myself from my experiences and approach problems from a neutral perspective. I realized my mistake in the middle of a focus group with parents of pediatric cancer patients. When I introduced myself and shared my personal history, the parents valued my experience and I earned credibility beyond my professional credentials. Much like clinical work, my personal experience also contributed to my research ideas and fueled my passion for working with childhood cancer patients and their families. Finding meaning in my work has helped sustain motivation through the inevitable paper and grant rejections. Now I have come full circle in my focus in terms of populations of interest, but I would not trade the path I took, as pursuing diverse experiences throughout my training gave me new skills to use and ideas to explore with this population.

Confession 2: I struggle with deciding when to say “yes” and when to say “no.” When I started my first tenure-track position at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, I was eager to say “yes” to any requests, such as new collaborations, journal reviews, committee service, and so on. However, multiple mentors cautioned me to say yes only when the request was in line with my career trajectory and I could follow through with the task. Figuring this out was easier during my training, as training programs were short and had predefined goals, with the ultimate goal of preparing for an academic job to initiate my program of research as a principal investigator (PI). Now that I have my first independent academic job, my primary focus is on developing a program of research that can contribute meaningfully to the field. In light of how long it can take to obtain funding for projects, I find that I need to be thinking of activities that will set me up for a successful grant 2 or more years from now. For the first time, I also have a team of students/mentees working for me and I need to manage their work and ensure funds for employees. For research tasks, I rely heavily on electronic organization systems where I and other team members can track progress on tasks and share documents. Although I am currently in year 2 of a 5-year career development award, I have also applied for multiple small pilot funds for second areas of research outside my career development project. After multiple failures, persistence paid off, and I am now funded by a Rutgers Cancer Institute Cancer Prevention and Control Pilot Award to develop a self-management skills intervention for AYA survivors of childhood cancer. Of course, grant writing took time from other tasks, so I had to say “no” to several interesting projects and journal reviews so I could focus on the grant. My mentor OJ Sahler once introduced me to another colleague by saying, “I like working with Katie because she does what she says she will do.” I try to live up to that.

Confession 3: Writing is hard. Although much of my work as a researcher involves writing, finding the time for focused writing is challenging. Grayson once advised me to limit the time I spend on email. When you need to write, close down your email and turn off the alerts, and limit your checking to once or twice a day for a small predefined amount of time. It is surprising how much you can accomplish without constant little interruptions. Another piece of advice I have been trying to follow is to separate writing and editing. I am constantly editing what I wrote (confession: I have already edited this paragraph three times before finishing it). Ideas come out a lot faster if I simply write them down and return to edit later.

One of the perks of my position is that my mentor, Dr. Manne, organizes monthly “works in progress” meetings where you can present a grant or manuscript for feedback from colleagues. Feedback from others is invaluable in improving my work and I am confident that it saves me from a lot of journal-related rejection. In addition to having others read my work, I actively seek to read and critique others’ work. I am honored to be a member of the JPP Editorial Board as well as a JPP mentor for students who want to learn how to review articles. Teaching someone how to review an article has helped me hone my skills as a reviewer and is a fun way of working with students.

Confession 4: I cannot do everything all by myself. In her presidential address at the 2015 Society of Pediatric Psychology Annual Conference, Dr. Elissa Jelalian noted that the idea of being a “triple threat”—outstanding clinician, researcher, and teacher—might be impossible to achieve. Although as a graduate student I wanted to “do it all,” with time and experience I realized that it is better to focus on excelling in one or two of those roles and building a team of other professionals who do what I do not. In fact, there has been a lot of attention lately to “team science” and how to effectively build collaborative teams to solve complex problems (Stokols, Hall, Taylor, & Moser, 2008). I have found it especially useful when working in a new setting. For example, I was the site Co-PI for a study funded by St. Baldrick’s Foundation (PI: Bob Noll) in which we developed and pilot tested a school-based peer-mediated intervention to improve the social competence of children surviving brain tumors. Although Bob is an expert in working with schools, the retired teachers we recruited to be our interventionists had interesting insights into how to adapt the intervention for our purposes and helped us avoid pitfalls that would have made implementation in schools more difficult.

I really enjoy working with people who have different expertise from me. As part of my National Cancer Institute (NCI) K07 Career Development Award, I am fortunate to be working with a team of mentors with expertise in the various areas in which I want to gain experience: AYA survivorship, intervention development, the use of technology and social media, and exercise physiology. My project involves developing and testing a mobile health fitness program for AYA survivors of childhood cancer. Pooling together our knowledge and experience has undoubtedly made the project better and given me new perspectives as to how to approach health promotion for AYA survivors.

Joining different professional organizations has also been a wonderful way to meet new collaborators. Early in graduate school, Ron advised me to get involved. SPP has provided me with many opportunities to get involved and make connections. In fact, the annual conference feels like a reunion among friends where I also get to learn about interesting projects and ideas. I have had the privilege of serving as the SPP Student Representative and now serve as the Co-Chair of the AYA Special Interest Group. I hope to continue to serve SPP throughout my career.

Confession 5: I try to be a student whenever I can. I love learning. One of the best parts of being a psychologist is that there are always new things to learn. Take advantage of educational opportunities when you can by attending conferences, participating in workshops, and seeking out mentorship from experts who have the knowledge and skills you need. As part of the University of Rochester Cancer Control Training Program, I obtained a Master of Public Health degree. This gave me a new perspective on national and global health, and a new vocabulary for thinking about health at the population level.

One of the driving reasons for applying for my current NCI K07 Career Development Award was the opportunity for training in the use of technology in behavioral interventions. I have protected time to gain new knowledge and skills that will serve me well as an independent investigator and collaborator. This project has helped me connect ideas from different fields, including behavioral medicine, developmental psychology, and human–computer interaction. It has given me a new perspective on how to approach health promotion and has been a lot of fun.

It is an exciting time to be a pediatric psychologist. Thank you to SPP for honoring me with the Routh Early Career Award. Thank you to my mentors who helped me achieve my dream of becoming the kind of doctor I really wanted to be and who continue to support me in overcoming the challenges of an early career psychologist.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (K07CA174728 and P30CA072720). The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Conflicts of interest: None declared.