The Elliotson prize and lecture

Dr Sarah Partridge has been a consultant clinical oncologist at Charing Cross Hospital (under the canopy of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust) since 2002. Having graduated from Guys and St.Thomas’ Hospital in 1990, achieving the Henry Myers prize in psychological medicine en-route, she found her medical niche within oncology. Her Clinical Oncology training integrated a research fellowship in Vancouver, Canada, between 1999-2000 contributing to insights regarding the effects of reversing tumour hypoxia. Here, her interests in psycho-oncology were re-ignited by learning more about neurolinguistic programming, which in turn led to her completing a diploma in clinical hypnotherapy in 2005 on her return to London. She went on to develop a service for cancer patients based at Charing Cross, as part of her role as lead for complementary therapy services. This has since evolved, to include a variety of service development initiatives aimed at enhancing recovery using self-hypnosis training and digital resources, including a website aspirationally named ‘Tranceform-Medical.com'. Her site specialities include Head and Neck malignancies and Thyroid cancer management where she routinely offers clinical hypnosis as an adjuvant intervention to empower patient self-care and improve side-effects of treatment and wellbeing.

As well as her clinical work, Sarah has training roles within the Royal College of Radiologists and contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate medical education for the Imperial Medical School.

As a member of the council for Hypnosis & Psychosomatic medicine at the RSM, she is an enthusiastic supporter of expanding the wider education regarding hypnosis, which could do so much more within almost all areas of medicine, given its powers to enhance the therapeutic relationship, import the benefits of the placebo effect, and activate the relaxation response associated with the light trance state.

Dr Graham Kidd trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital. After 5 years in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he trained in Psychiatry at St Thomas' Hospital. He then gave consultancy in NW Surrey until 2006. Since then, Dr Kidd has joined a private practice as a Psychotherapist, specialising in psychological trauma. He is trained in CBT, CAT, EMDR and Hypnosis.