NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in General Practice
BMedSci BMBS MPhil AFHEA (MRCGP AKT & RCA complete, awaiting ARCP)
Email: mt745@medschl.cam.ac.uk
Background
Dr Melody Turner is a general practitioner with a specialist interest in child and adolescent mental health. She became a junior doctor in 2015 and has worked in various hospital and community settings in the East of England. In March 2022 she completed her consultancy exam for independent general practice. Alongside clinical work, she is an active researcher.
She has been a member of the Applied Social Sciences Group (ASSG) at the University of Cambridge since 2017. The ASSG fosters interdisciplinary work between medics, sociologists, psychologists, and other specialities. Together with her peers at the ASSG, they wrote an application for the Pilkington Prize (the University’s highest teaching award) to recognise Dr Robbie Duschinsky’s excellent leadership of the ASSG, which he was awarded in March 2022. In addition, Melody appreciated Robbie’s supervision for her MPhil in Primary Care Research. Her MPhil thesis explored the social construction of long covid on Twitter, given the need to focus on COVID-19 research during the pandemic. Currently, Melody and her peers at the ASSG are conducting a systematic review of mental health provision for children and young people with social care involvement.
Research Interests
Melody is interested in multi-disciplinary research which explores infant, child and adolescent mental health from a psychological and physiological perspective, using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.
Melody is enthusiastic about the co-creation of research with children and young people, which supports the application of theory and research to provide real-life impact for participants.
Additional Research Projects
Melody accepted an invitation to join NIHR MindTech at the University of Nottingham in early 2022. She is delighted to be returning to work with Dr Joanna Lockwood and Professor Elvira Perez Vallejos, alongside new colleagues. She is collaborating to explore the development, adoption and evaluation of technologies for mental healthcare in children and young people.
Melody has received an unconditional offer from UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health to complete further studies in Community Child Health, focusing on child public health and safeguarding, to begin part-time in September 2022. She is looking forward to returning to the institution where she completed her undergraduate medical elective in paediatric surgery.
Teaching at the University of Cambridge
Melody completed her Integrated Foundation in Medical Education at the University of Cambridge in 2018 and subsequently became an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She currently holds two teaching roles:
2021 + Seminar leader for the Social and Ethical Context of Health and Illness for Medical students
2017 + Preparing for Practice Mentor (PfPA) for Medical students.
Enquiries
Melody welcomes enquiries from:
-Supervisors seeking a research assistant
-Peers considering collaboration or seeking support
-Students pursuing advice regarding a career in clinical academia or medicine
-Schools or conferences looking for a speaker on widening participation in medicine, clinical academia and CAMH
Selected Publications
Duschinsky R, Bakkum L, Mannes JMM, Skinner GCM, Turner M, Mann A, Coughlan B, Reijman S, Foster S, Beckwith H. Six attachment discourses: convergence, divergence and relay. Attach Hum Dev. 2021 Aug;23(4):355-374. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2021.1918448. Epub 2021 May 12. PMID: 33978553.
Coughlan B, Duschinsky R, Turner M, et al. What services are useful for patients with an intellectual disability? InnovAiT. 2020;13(4):218-225. doi:10.1177/1755738019900376
Turner M, Beckwith H, Duschinsky R, et al. Attachment difficulties and disorders. InnovAiT. 2019;12(4):173-179. doi:10.1177/1755738018823817
Cao K, Turner M, Mishrah P, and Cuckow P The rare case of an extraperitoneal ureteral herniation into the inguinal canal of a 12-year-old boy The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 2019 101:1, e32-e34
Turner, M, Steven L and Mushtaq I et al. Surgical management of renal tract problems Paediatrics and Child Health, 2016, Volume 26, Issue 6, 239 – 245 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paed.2016.02.003
Perez E, Turner M, Fisher A, Lockwood J, Daley D (2014) Linguistic Analysis of the Preschool Five Minute Speech Sample: What the Parents of Preschool Children with Early Signs of ADHD Say and How They Say It?. PLOS ONE 9(9): e106231. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0106231
All publications available here