Nuala Kane

Dr Nuala Kane joined KCL in 2018 as a Clinical Research Associate with the Mental Health and Justice Project and Mental Health Research UK MD(Res) Scholar. Her research focuses on complex and contested capacity assessments, using data from Court of Protection judgments and interviews with psychiatrists, lawyers and judges. She is particularly interested in the role of the assessed person’s beliefs and values in the assessment and in ethical dilemmas arising in complex capacity assessments. In 2018 she was awarded the Tom Palmer Mental Health Research UK MD(Res) Award, funded by Mental Health Research UK and the Schizophrenia Research Fund.

She is a Higher Trainee in Psychiatry at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Prior to embarking on Core Psychiatry Training, she undertook an MSc in Philosophy of Psychiatry at KCL in 2014/15, writing her dissertation on philosophical justifications for advance directives in bipolar disorder. Her undergraduate studies in Medicine were completed at NUI Galway in Ireland and she has experience working in mental health care in Ireland and Australia.

Research interests

• Mental health ethics
• Mental health law
• Philosophy of psychiatry
• Medical education

Teaching

• In 2019, Dr Kane designed, delivered and evaluated a Maudsley Masterclass on Complex Capacity Assessments in conjunction with Maudsley Learning.
• In 2017/18, she was a teacher with Extreme Psychiatry, a unique psychiatry and anti-stigma course involving simulation-based learning for third year KCL medical students.

Expertise and public engagement

• Dr Kane worked with a research colleague, Dr Stephenson, to organise a Westminster Evidence Session on the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act in 2019.
• In 2020, Dr Kane taught two sessions on ‘Decision making and Covid-19’ to a national audience as part of the Infomed webinar series on Covid-19 and Mental Health.
• Dr Kane contributed to a presentation on ethical approaches to ‘Age and Covid-19’ as part of a public consultation by Ipsos Mori in conjunction with the Mental Health and Justice Project in 2020.