THE
WORD SPECIALIST

 

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Dr Penelope Cream

MA, DipPsych, MSc, DClinPsy, CPsychol, AFBPsS

Chartered Clinical and Health Psychologist

Registered with the HCPC, BPS and ACP-UK

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Psychology Experience

I have worked for many years in NHS roles, with a specialist interest in complex medical conditions and their overlap with mental health difficulties, in particular with long-standing trauma presentations. This involves providing psychological services, research and training in medical settings, including intensive care, inpatient wards, outpatient settings and support services for GPs and families. I have contributed to, managed and established services and clinics, introducing psychology to medical environments, and working with commissioners on a local and national level. I have been a member of a national peer review team whose remit was to improve standards of care in general, and to introduce psychological care nationally across both paediatric and adult services.

 

I hold degrees from Oxford University, University College London, and Royal Holloway, University of London, and qualified from the Royal Holloway DClinPsy course in 2006. I am chartered in both Clinical and Health Psychology and have a strong therapeutic and research background, with additional training in various areas including specialist supervision, CBT, schema therapy, systemic and narrative therapies, ACT, and motivational interviewing.

 

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Editorial Experience

Before training as a psychologist I worked as a project manager, senior editor, and commissioning editor for all types of non-fiction and illustrated books. This involved extensive proofreading, copy editing, writing and author support skills, as well as picture research, team and budget management, and supervision and training of junior team members. A regular part of my work was the co-ordination of multiple international publishers on co-edition publications, each in a different language. Some of my titles won international awards, including an award from the Medical Writers’ Association of America for The Ultimate Book of Men’s Health.

 

I continued to use my editorial skills in my clinical roles, writing and editing a wide variety of patient information leaflets, teaching presentations, research papers, funding proposals, and highly complex national audit reports for specialist medical departments. I am happy working with all types of material, from technical medical and psychological reports, to clinic letters in all styles from the very formal to creative narrative ‘stories’. I am also familiar with composing and editing qualitative research articles and creating illustrated books for children, for example when undergoing surgery.