The talk in class on Monday wasn’t too interesting to me because I’m not super interested in going into a health psychology profession. I thought it was really cool that Olbirsch had a lot of different experiences and held various positions throughout her career because it showed that this field is flexible and there is a lot of work to cover. She mentioned how social workers have a pretty wide job description because there’s so much they have to do, and heath psychologists can help to eliminate some of that extra work. Even though health psychology isn’t in my future plans at the moment, it was cool to hear that health psychologists are needed and hospitals are learning how to best utilize their knowledge and experience.
One of the additional questions asked by Dr. Nonterah was regarding their role in policy changes, and while Ebony seemed to have a bit of experience and interest in the question, Olbirsch said she had nothing to say about it. I’m not sure if that meant that health psychologists don’t normally tackle the policy changes within the health field or if that just wasn’t of interest to her. The politics behind health isn’t really of interest to me, so I was happy to hear that Olbirsch didn’t have much to say on the issue.
Overall, I appreciated their time speaking with us about their career because it’s always refreshing to hear people who are passionate and excited about what they do. Olbirsch was someone who helped to kick start this field with her mentor while Ebony was intrigued by field in undergrad, but they both had a lot of valuable insight on health psychology as a profession. I feel like I could identify more with Ebony just because she’s relatively close to us in age, so it was cool to hear her talk about her experience in undergrad and graduate school and her plans for the future.
I appreciate your honesty about the talk because I also found it difficult to stay completely engaged if it wasn’t directly in my field of interest. The information they gave was really helpful for getting a better sense of careers in the field but it made me feel like it is more geared towards medical practice than social or psychological fields.
I agree that it was interesting to hear of just some of the experiences and encounters Dr. Olbirsch has had, but I understand your feeling toward the talk in general. While I do not plan to pursue health psychology specifically either, I also agree that it was nice to learn about the role that health psychologists play directly in hospitals as well as schools, as Ebony talked about. To the comment on policy change, I got that Dr. Olbirsch simply wants regulations and restrictions on her treatment of/with patients because she feels it’s becoming so limiting that she and others in the field cannot learn more (and potentially expand best practice methods) and cannot treat patients as effectively. Overall, I found the dynamic between the highly experienced veteran in the field and the just getting started rookie to be a unique match and it made for an interesting talk.