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Professor Katherine Sleeman BSc, MBBS, MRCP, PhD
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Professor Katherine Sleeman BSc, MBBS, MRCP, PhD

  • Academics
  • Supervisors
  • Clinical

Laing Galazka Chair in Palliative Care, Honorary Consultant in Palliative Medicine

Impact Lead, Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy & Rehabilitation.

Research subject areas

  • Palliative care

Contact details

Biography

I am the Laing Galazka Chair in Palliative Care, based at the Cicely Saunders Institute at King’s College London. I am joint Academic Impact Lead for the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, and Chair of the Palliative Care Clinical Academic Group Reach and Impact Group. I lead the Integrated Academic Trainee (IAT) programme for palliative medicine. I am an Honorary Consultant at King’s College Hospital NHS Trust.

My NIHR Clinician Scientist Fellowship (2016-2021) aims to understand and improve patterns of care before death for people with dementia, using linked clinical and administrative data resources. I have led projects using the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS), Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), and Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) databases. My research focuses on the intersection between palliative care and policy. Prior to my NIHR Clinician Scientist Fellowship, I was a Cicely Saunders International Scholar (2015-2016) and an NIHR Clinical Lecturer (2010-2015), both based at King’s.

In 2019 I received the inaugural Women in Palliative Care award from the European Association of Palliative Care for my work exploring gender bias in academia. In 2020 I received a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust travel fellowship to explore public and policy engagement in palliative care.

I graduated from University College London Medical School (1999) with a BSc in Developmental Biology (top 1st - 1996) and distinctions in Clinical Pharmacology and Pathology. I trained in General Medicine and Oncology at Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals and the Royal Marsden Hospital. I completed my PhD in 2007 (Title - Stem Cell Activity and Estrogen Receptor Expression in the Mouse Mammary Gland; the Institute of Cancer Research, London).

Research interests:

  • Palliative and end of life care for people with dementia
  • Use of routinely collected data to understand patterns of care towards the end of life
  • Inequalities in palliative and end-of-life care
  • The use of evidence in policy

Research profile

Description

  • Module co-lead for MSc in palliative care - Service Development and Policy
  • MSc Teaching - Symptom epidemiology (Biology and Management of Symptoms in Advanced Disease); Palliative care and policy (Service Development and Policy); The value of research in palliative care (Service Development and Policy); Cohort studies (MRES Clinical Research)
  • MSc supervision
  • PhD supervision
  • MBBS - Seminars, workshops and ward-based teaching on palliative care; Scholarly Project supervisor; OSCE examiner; personal tutor