We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Allison Applebaum. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Allison below.

Allison, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

I am a clinical psychologist by training, and I came to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow. At the time, I was working with patients with advanced, life-limiting cancers. What was so striking to me about these patients’ narratives was that as opposed to focusing on their own mortality, they were focused on their parents, and partners, and children, and siblings, and friends. The individuals left in the waiting rooms and left at home. The individuals who they identified as the lynchpin of their care and who would be most deeply impacted by their eventual deaths. I realized back then in 2010 – long before the COVID-19 pandemic – that cancer care specifically, and healthcare more broadly, was reliant on family caregivers to shoulder tremendous responsibilities, without providing them with training or education, and despite the fact that the scientific literature had already very well documented distress in caregivers, there were no targeted support services available for caregivers in any cancer center in the United States. Inspired to address this significant gap in supportive care, a year later I founded the Caregivers Clinic at MSK, the first targeted psychosocial care program for caregivers in any U.S. cancer center. Nearly 15 years later, the Caregivers Clinic now serves as the “gold standard” for psychosocial support for caregivers in a healthcare system and a model for new programs that are being developed nationally.

Allison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am am a clinical psychologist, writer, speaker, researcher, and advocate whose primary focus is on developing innovative approaches to meeting the urgent needs of family caregivers – that is, family members and friends of patients with chronic or life-limiting illnesses who serve a critical and often unrecognized role on the healthcare team. I am currently a Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine and the Director of the Center for Caregiving at the Mount Sinai Health System. Previously, I was the Founding Director of the Caregivers Clinic at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). The Clinic was the first of its kind in any NCCN Comprehensive Cancer Center in the United States and provides psychosocial care to family members and friends of patients who experience significant distress and burden as a result of their caregiving role. Early on in my training and work with patients living with cancer and other chronic and life-limiting illnesses, I realized that their family caregivers were too often suffering in silence while serving as the invisible backbone to our healthcare system. I quickly shifted gears to focus my efforts on supporting these family caregivers. Presently, I work with healthcare systems worldwide to develop support programs for caregivers like the one I established at MSK, to draw attention to the unique needs of caregivers across various illnesses and care settings, and to implement systems-level changes that facilitate support and integrate caregivers more formally into the healthcare team.

My professional work has been mirrored by my own caregiving journey in providing care for my father. I deeply understand the distress, invisibility, and multidimensional hardship that over 53 million caregivers in the United States experience today. I am committed to amplifying the voices of caregiving families and addressing the profound mental health needs of caregivers worldwide.

In February, 2024, I published my first narrative nonfiction book, Stand By Me: A Guide to Navigating Modern, Meaningful Caregiving (Simon Element, 2024). Stand By Me provides you with guidance, training, support, education, and validation to empower you to provide your loved one with the best quality of life and care possible, while promoting your own well-being. It covers crucial topics, including:
-Getting the most from any healthcare system
-Productive advance care planning
-Navigating changing roles and relationship dynamics
-Finding meaning and purpose in the caregiving experience

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I could go back, I would absolutely choose the same profession and specialty, but what I would do differently is the pace at which I moved forward in my training and career. Specifically, I went directly from my undergraduate degree to graduate school, and then to progressive levels of training within the healthcare system, from intern, to fellow, to attending. This is the norm. In hindsight, I wish I had given myself the gift of time in between my undergraduate and graduate degrees to travel and explore the world, and feel a little “freer” in my 20s than I did while pursuing my PhD. Similarly, I wish I had taken off a few months (at least) between my postdoctoral training and joining the hospital faculty for my first job. Having time off in academic medicine can be challenging because of the ways faculty positions are structured, but I encourage those I mentor to consider time off when possible. So much growth and healing can occur when we press pause on work, and the time away can allow us to return with renewed enthusiasm and creativity.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Boundaries! I am a clinical psychologist by training, and for the past 15 years, providing clinical care to incredibly vulnerable patients has been a large part of my day-to-day life. Thankfully, I learned early on in graduate school how important emotional boundaries are in being able to succeed and thrive as a mental health professional. For me, what that means is that work stays at work. I purposefully avoid thinking about and talking about work after hours. I know that that might sound cold, but in order for me to take the best care of my patients, I need emotional space from the clinic setting. For me, boundaries are also related to how I engage in self-care. I’m a classic introvert, which means that I need quiet time to recover my energy. And that often translates into setting boundaries with my time and energy, saying no to people and activities, and listening honestly to what my inner voice is saying. These skills are critical for preventing burnout among healthcare professionals and those working in the helping professionals where work depends on an outpouring of our energy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allisonapplebaum.com
• Instagram: @drallisonapplebaum
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-j-applebaum-ph-d-fapos-87482722
• Twitter: @DocApplebaum

Image Credits

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