Rate My Professor Clare Ellis-Smith

Dr Clare Ellis-Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Palliative Care at the Cicely Saunders Institute of Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation at King’s College London. She also serves as Director of the MSc in Palliative Care programme. An occupational therapist by background, she holds a BSc in Occupational Therapy from the University of Cape Town and completed her PhD at King’s College London, where her doctoral research focused on the development and evaluation of a person-centred outcome measure to improve the assessment and management of symptoms and concerns for people with dementia.

Her research specialisations centre on palliative care for people with dementia and their families, including the development and evaluation of complex interventions, assessment and measurement tools, and approaches to support quality of life in older people and those with multi-morbidity. She has led or contributed to major projects such as EMBED-Care, OPTCare Elderly, the SPACE project, C-POS for children’s palliative care, and studies examining palliative care responses in care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Ellis-Smith teaches research methods, statistics, service management and policy on the Palliative Care MSc programme. Her work contributes to advancing person-centred care and global palliative care education initiatives through ongoing international collaborations.