Psychiatry and palliative care study day

Jed is an art psychotherapist and clinical academic at BSMHFT. His clinical background lies in both adult mental health and in hospice and palliative care. His research interests lie in marginalisation in healthcare, and his main research focus is in the improvement of palliative and end of life care for people within the mental health system who have incurable physical health conditions. His doctoral research included the first interviews with people with both an incurable physical illness and SMI. He has also carried out research with clinical staff regarding the barriers to providing PEOLC to people with mental ill health. Jed is passionate about the use of arts-based research methods to facilitate better conversations between healthcare staff and patients, he also has experience in co-production approaches and methods.

Dr Asanga Fernando is a Consultant Cancer Liaison Psychiatrist, Cancer Co-Lead for Survivorship & Clinical Director of simulation and clinical skills at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation trust in London. Dr Fernando holds a number of educational roles in Cancer. Dr Fernando has interests and experience in integrating mental health and physical healthcare, clinical leadership, policy, digital innovation, quality improvement and medical education as well as research at the interface of mental health and physical health. He has previously worked on advising at a national level on mental health policy and is a keen teacher, advocate and medical educator. He has developed a number of innovative simulation, digital and educational programmes within cancer, including ones managing mental health, and end of life care, and together with colleagues in palliative and acute care has developed a number of innovative communication skills programmes concerned with treatment escalation planning and end of life communication in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Professor Liz Sampson is a professor in the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, Division of Psychiatry, UCL. She studied medicine at the University of Birmingham and her MD at the Institute of Neurology at UCL. Epidemiological and health services research focuses on end-of-life care for people with dementia and on dementia and delirium in acute hospitals. She is Principal Investigator on the NIHR/ESRC-funded Empowering Better End of Life Dementia Care programme (EMBED-Care). She works clinically as a consultant in liaison psychiatry at North Middlesex University Hospital with Barnet Enfield & Haringey Mental Health Trust 

Dr Amanda Thompsell is currently the National specialty advisor for older adult’s mental health NHSE&I and 2016-2020 she was Chair of the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She is also a medical member for the First-Tier tribunal service and a member of advisory board to the Journal of Dementia Care. Dr Thompsell trained and originally practised as a GP before switching to working in old age hospital medicine, and then retraining in old age psychiatry. As a consultant she worked in a Care Homes Support Team working with care homes with nursing and then in an old age psychiatry liaison service and most recently in a specialist care unit caring for older adults. She has an interest in end of life care especially Namaste care and was involved in research on its efficacy and development of a toolkit with St Christopher’s hospice. She was clinical champion for the Dementia Work stream of the End of Life Programme of the Modernisation Initiative from January 2009-June 2011.

Dr Rachel Gibbons is dual trained as a Consultant Psychiatrist and Medical Psychotherapist. She has been working in the NHS over the past 20 years in various settings and services including: Inpatient, outpatient, personality disorder, liaison, prisons and forensic psychotherapy. Until February 2020 she worked as the National Director of Therapies for the Priory Group. She is a psychoanalyst and group analyst. She is the chair of the new RCPsych working group on the Effect of Suicide and Homicide on Psychiatrists, and the Patient Safety Group. She has been researching the nature of suicide and its effects over the last 12 years. She is co-editor with Dr Jo O’Reilly of the forthcoming Royal College Book ‘Seminars In the Psychotherapies: Where Psychiatry meets Psychotherapy' due for Publication in spring 2021.

Dr Shute undertook medical training and passed the MRCP before going on to train as a psychiatrist. He has worked as a consultant for 15 years. Particular interests are the use of systemic therapy in physically ill patients and the integration of Peer Support Workers in the Liaison Psychiatry MDT. 

Dr Rebecca Wilson is an epidemiologist/trial statistician with special interests in mental health and palliative care. Rebecca joined the Cicely Saunders Institute in 2016 to work on a project investigating end of life care in people with serious mental illness. This including studies utilising linked clinical records and mortality data to explore factors associated with hospital admissions and place of death in adults with serious mental illness. Rebecca has a PhD in Epidemiology from UCL.