Clinical/Research Connection Posted on December 10, 2007 John E. Bates (bio) talks about the vital connection between practice and research.

My career path was really very simple. I knew I wanted to be a clinical psychologist before I went to college. I got into college and discovered what that was, and realized that was really correct that I really wanted to be a clinical psychologist. The thing that was surprising to me was my interest in developmental.

That started happening when I was in college and then it got reinforced in graduate school and another thing that was surprising was that when I was in college and I was applying for graduate school, I thought that I would go out and do clinical practice for a while and get connected to the “real world” for a while and then get back into research.

And what I discovered while I was in graduate school was it doesn’t really work that way. You have an easier time moving from research practice into clinical practice than vice versa, so I’ve kept my clinical practice on the side rather than the forefront of my career.

The connection between clinical and research is really vital for me; as a clinical psychologist I’m interested in doing research that ultimately helps to solve problems and prevent problems. So if I learn something in research, I’m always looking for ways that I can translate that into something in our clinical work.

And if I learn something in the clinic, sometimes that helps me to get really good research ideas. So, for example, in my clinical work I got interested in the effects of sleep deprivation on children’s daytime functioning and now I’m doing some research on that so it’s a back and forth process; it’s very reciprocal.

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