Experience
I am currently the news reporter and deputy editor for BMJ Careers, the UK based print and online jobs resource for doctors by BMJ Group. I cover doctors’ jobs, training, education, continuing professional development, pay, pensions, and work conditions, among other topics.
I am also a freelance medical writer and editor with experience in writing about medical research and clinical practice. I specialise in copyediting medical, technical, and basic science material to a high standard and in structurally editing material to make it more suitable for a specialist audience or the general public.
Writing
The majority of my writing experience is in writing feature-length articles for cardiologists and producing 250-word and 500-word summaries of clinical research for practicing physicians. I also write news stories about and features medical careers and workforce issues for UK doctors at all stages of their career. You can see some examples of my writing here.
I write a medical blog that is aimed at the general public, in which I cover medical news, clinical research, events, and issues affecting clinical practice. My blog has been nominated for the clinical research blog of the year award in the ResearchBlogging.org Awards 2010. I also blog for the British Medical Journal.
I have completed a 12-week evening course on news and features writing at the London School of Journalism, for which my final grades on the four news and feature assignments I completed were A, A+, A-, and A+. I have also completed the basic and advanced critical appraisal workshops run by the British Medical Association Library in association with the School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, which covered medical statistics and the skills needed to critically appraise papers on different types of clinical trial (for example, randomised controlled trials and qualitative studies).
Copyediting and proofreading
I have more than five years of experience in copyediting medical material, largely for the British Medical Journal, monthly specialist research journals such as the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, and the eight specialty-based Nature Clinical Practice journals (now part of the Nature Reviews series).
I have experience in copyediting a wide range of article types such as clinical research papers, medical case reports, news, features, reviews, and commentary articles. I am, therefore, well versed in medical terminology, how clinical research is conducted, and the different approaches to editing required for different types of article.
I have worked as a freelance proofreader for the website of British daily newspaper The Guardian and as such have experience in writing and proofreading online, HTML, and XML.
I have completed the three-day Copyediting Skills Course at The Publishing Training Centre.
Publishing
I participated in Nature Publishing Group’s Graduate Internship Scheme in 2006/7. During this six-month paid internship, I rotated around the editorial, production, commercial, and web departments of Nature Clinical Practice.
This invaluable experience has given me a rounded view of all aspects of scientific publishing. For example, I attended the European Federation of Neurological Societies conference and pitched the Nature Clinical Practice journals to pharmaceutical company sales representatives and managed a project to produce full-text audio demos of Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology articles.
Background
In 2005 I graduated from King’s College London with a first class BSc (Hons) in Human Biology and was awarded the Hamilton Prize in Anatomy and Human Sciences. I spent the second year of my degree on an academic exchange at University of California, Riverside, where I was a staff writer for the Arts section of the student newspaper.
I began my career in publishing at the Society for Endocrinology, managing the publication of the Journal of Endocrinology and the bi-annual newsletter of the European Society of Endocrinology. I then spent two years working for Nature Clinical Practice, which forms part of the medical publishing arm of Nature Publishing Group, and later moved to BMJ Group.
- Please get in touch if you would like to see a copy of my curriculum vitae.