I love people. Talking to them, watching them, eating with them, drinking with them. Because of this, I’ve chosen a career studying people, and how they behave (and how we can potentially change that).

I did my first degree in psychology. I’d always imagined that I’d be an artist or a fashion designer, but once I started my psychology A-level, I was hooked. Learning about how and why people behave in certain ways is amazing. I took a particular interest in Health Psychology — the psychology of physical (rather than mental) health and illness; particularly how people adapt to chronic illness, how psychological health can interact with physical health, and also how to we can get people to be healthier.

Having found my area of interest, I went on to do a Masters in Health Psychology. This was a hard slog (it was actually more hard work than my PhD!), but it was incredibly interesting. For my dissertation, I looked at predictors of sexual health screening attendance in students. I’d already chosen to focus a number of my essays on sexual health, as it was something that really interested me, and I felt very strongly about.

After completing my Masters, I was lucky enough to be offered a funded PhD studentship. My PhD research focussed on patients with non-cardiac chest pain — i.e., those who attend A&E with chest pain, but have no serious or cardiac cause for it. We found a fascinating interplay with anxiety, whereby patients were often aware that anxiety was causing their pain, but hadn’t been given to tools to deal with it

This led us to develop a self-help booklet for non-cardiac chest pain patients, which sparked my love of intervention development. Developing something that actually could make a difference is really exciting to me — I’d definitely always rather be working on the ‘front line’ in applied research, than in a laboratory.

When I finished my PhD, I struggled a little to find a job, as most people do (thesis writing takes over a lot of your life — it doesn’t really leave time for job applications!). I was focussing my searches in and around the city in which I was living, considering all Health Psychology-related research posts. I was starting to grow tired of the job search, when something in my Twitter feed caught my eye:

Combining intervention development AND sexual health? My dream job! It did mean moving to London, which I wasn’t very happy about (neither were a lot of my friends), but it’s the best move I ever made.

So, I am now working as a post-doctoral researcher in the area of e-health — i.e., using technology to improve health. As my background is in health psychology, I have approached this field with more of the ‘health’ and less of the ‘e’ (unless you count the endless hours of Twitter and Facebook procrastination during my PhD).

I’m working on developing and testing a website to increase condom use in men — good, safe sex is something I feel very strongly about (and it also makes for a very interesting search history). Working with technology is an interesting process, and a steep learning curve. I plan to use this blog as a forum for sharing my experience, advice, and opinions on working in the areas of e-health and sexual health. I hope you find it useful (and potentially entertaining…)