Dr Pamela Rae
Profiles

Dr Pamela Rae

Post Doctoral Research Fellow PIHC

Faculty of Health

Dr Pamela Rae can be contacted through arrangement with our Press Office, to speak to the media on these areas of expertise.
  • Psychology
  • Experimental methods
  • Mixed-methods
  • Multivariate statistics
  • Qualitative research
  • Quantitative research
Biography

Biography


Dr Pamela Rae is a research psychologist and has been with the University of Plymouth since 2011, teaching and researching in the School of Psychology, the Peninsula Medical School, and the School of Nursing and Midwifery. 

Prior to joining us at Plymouth, Pam worked as an cognitive behavioural therapist within an NHS multi-professional mental health team. In addition, Pam led a psychometric assessment service, specialising in cognitive impairment. She has also worked within multi-professional research teams, evaluating psychological treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia (University of Liverpool), exploring psychological adjustment to sudden visual impairment (University of Nottingham), and exploring the social needs of institutionalised psychiatric in-patients (NHS).

Pam recently joined the Plymouth Integrative Health and social care education Centre (PIHC), who's core business is promoting undergraduate inter-professional learning across the Faculty of Health's six schools. These six schools include: School of Psychology; Peninsula Medical School, School of Nursing and Midwifery; Peninsula Dental School; School of Allied Health Professions; School of Biomedical Science. Success in many careers in Health, Social Care and beyond, depend on inter-professional collaboration. The tremendous positive impact of effective inter-professional collaborative skills on achieving shared goals, is something Pam has witnessed many times in her years of working within multi-disciplinary teams. She believes that inter-professional learning sessions, embedded within under- and post-graduate curricula, enable students to develop these incredibly valuable inter-professional collaborative skills.  

Pam is committed to supporting teaching and research around inter-professional learning. Research might include pedagogical evaluations, organisational indicators of impact or psychological mechanisms of inter-professional working. Staff, students, anyone with an interest, are very welcome to email Pam with inquiries about collaboration or support.


Additional roles/memberships within the University community:
External:
  • Pam is a peer reviewer for Social Science and Medicine, International Journal of Nursing Studies, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Nursing Open.

Qualifications

  • Ph.D. University of Plymouth. Experimental Psychology
Inspired by the field of eye-witness testimony and false memory, my PhD work tested a widely held theory of 'Embodied Cognition'. The theory argues that as part of an ancient survival mechanism, we automatically and unconsciously process our environment (for danger, food, and so on). When the environment around us changes in any way, we use our limited cognitive resource to process those changes. When the environment changes substantially, we use substantial amounts of our limited cognitive resource. The more novel or busier the environment is, the more of our finite cognitive resource we use and the less we have left to consciously process our thoughts. With less cognitive resource for thoughts, we start to make mistakes and sometimes we make mistakes without realising it. So in theory, if an eye-witness is interviewed at the side of a noisy, busy city-center road, their recall of events they just witnessed may be less accurate than if interviewed in a calm, quiet office space. An interesting theory, interesting reasoning. However! My PhD work showed this was only part of the story ...

  • M.Sc. Psychological Research Methods, University of Plymouth. Excellent further training in statistical analysis & research design 
  • B.Sc. (Hons) Psychology, University of Leeds,1990
As a second year psychology undergraduate, my eyes were opened wide to challenges in mental health care: for both carers and cared for. I spent the summer working with in-patients at a psychiatric institution in Wakefield. Care in the community was trying to undo the institutionalised approach of bygone days but the process was not a smooth one. Just one example of this could be seen among some of the elderly in-patients who had been sectioned or admitted to the hospital at a young age. They had spent the majority of their lives in an institution where decisions had been made for them: they had not, for decades, had practice in making decisions for themselves, or in solving everyday problems you and I do in the blink of an eye. My work that summer, supervised by two inspiring clinical psychologists, shaped my Bachelor's dissertation and influenced my future career choices. My dissertation was a research project designed to inform the content of care-package 'tool kits' for people and their carers making the transition from institution to community. My project evidenced the stark difference between the problem solving abilities of institutionalised psychiatric in-patients, psychiatric out-patients and non-psychiatric outpatients, controlling for several variables. The results were statistically significant and in the direction you have probably guessed: institutionalised psychiatric in-patients showed little to no evidence of problem solving ability needed to get by in everyday life. With this evidence, we demonstrated the need for problem-solving training to be considered as part of a care package for anyone moving from an institutionalised environment to a more independent one. A simple finding, with a long-lasting impact on well-being.

Teaching

Teaching

Teaching interests

I have taught on several undergraduate Psychology modules including statistical inference testing, quantitative research methods and psychological theory.

Publications

Publications

Journals

Endacott, R., Pearce, S., Rae, P., Richardson, A., Bench, S., Pattison, N., & SEISMIC Study Team. (2021). How COVID‐19 has affected staffing models in intensive care: A qualitative study examining alternative staffing models (SEISMIC). Journal of advanced nursing.

Rae, P. J., Pearce, S., Greaves, P. J., Dall'Ora, C., Griffiths, P., & Endacott, R. (2021). Outcomes sensitive to critical care nurse staffing levels: A systematic review. Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 67, 103110.

Rae, P. J., & Perfect, T. J. (2014). Visual distraction during word-list retrieval does not consistently disrupt memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 362.

Day, J. C., Bentall, R. P., Roberts, C., Randall, F., Rogers, A., Cattell, D., ... & Power, C. (2005). Attitudes toward antipsychotic medication: the impact of clinical variables and relationships with health professionals. Archives of general psychiatry, 62(7), 717-724.

Forster, J., Finlayson, S., Bentall, R., Day, J., Randall, F., Wood (Rae), P., ... & Healy, D. (2003). The perceived expressed emotion in staff scale. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 10(1), 109-117.

Rogers, A., Day, J. C., Williams, B., Randall, F., Wood (Rae), P., Healy, D., & Bentall, R. P. (1998). The meaning and management of neuroleptic medication: a study of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Social science & medicine, 47(9), 1313-1323.

Dodds, A. G., Bailey (Rae), P., Pearson, A., & Yates, L. (1991). Psychological factors in acquired visual impairment: The development of a scale of adjustment. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 85(7), 306-310.

Chapters

Randall, F., Wood (Rae), P., & Day, J. (2014). Enhancing appropriate adherence with neuroleptic medication: two contrasting approaches. In A casebook of cognitive therapy for psychosis (pp. 297-314). Routledge.

Scholarly Editions

Rae, P. J. (2019). The effect of visual distraction on memory for words, pictures and complex events (Doctoral dissertation, University of Plymouth).

Reports

Archer, J., Cameron, N., Lewis, M., Marshall, M., O'Hanlon, J., Regan de Bere, S., Walshe, K; Baines, R; Boyd, A; Bryce, M; Ferguson, J; Gabe-Thomas, E; Holmes, S; Lalani, M; Price, T; Rae, P; Roberts, M; Stevens, S; Tazzyman, A; Tredinnick-Rowe, J; Wakeling, J; Zahra, D  UMbRELLA: Evaluating the regulatory impacts of medical revalidation–final report. General Medical Council, 2018-05-01

Other Publications

Bamforth, K., Rae, P., Maben, J., Endacott, R., Lloyd, H.M. and Pearce, S. (2021), “Perceptions of healthcare professionals’ psychological wellbeing at work: a scoping review protocol”, OSF, 8 October, available at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SMFU9.

Endacott, R., Rae, P., Pearce, S., Greaves, J., Dall'Ora, C., & Griffiths, P. (2019). Outcomes sensitive to critical care nurse staffing levels: A systematic review protocol.