King’s College London hosts a thriving community of research-active health professionals. Across King’s Health partners, we employ and train almost every kind of health profession, representing a unique multidisciplinary environment in which to forge a clinical academic career.

The King’s Clinical Academic Training Office (KCATO) offers advice, best practice and information on navigating a clinical academic career. It is open to all health professionals who are based at any of the organisations of King’s Health Partners – KCL, Guy’s and St Thomas’s, King’s College Hospital or South London and Maudsley NHS Trusts.

Our strategic priorities are:

• To champion clinical academic careers, recognising the unique value that clinical academics bring to innovation and improving outcomes for patients
• Clinical Academic capacity building, including delivery of strategic funding programmes at pre-doctoral, doctoral and postdoctoral level
• To design and deliver bespoke career development opportunities, recognising the challenges in navigating the career paths, particularly across transition points
• To be a central, visible contact point, signposting to opportunities or services and to help avoid silos or barriers to progression.

The KCATO Brochure outlines the various training and resources open to health professionals across King's and our NHS Trust partners via the KCATO.

• View our KCATO Brochure for 2023-24 (pdf)

Further information and resources on training, development, funding and careers are available on the newly launched KCATO Hub. For colleagues in any of the King's Health Partners who wish to access the KCATO Hub, please request access via this form.

• Access our KCATO Sharepoint Hub (King's log in credentials required).

Contact details

You can contact the KCATO Team at kcato@kcl.ac.uk.

KCATO also administers the NIHR Integrated Academic Training Programme at King's College London. If you have any queries on the IAT Programme, please contact IATadmin@kcl.ac.uk.

Join our newsletter

Health professional researchers will receive quarterly newsletters from the King's Clinical Academic Training Office. If you have not received the newsletters and would like to be added to our mailing lists, please sign up to our newsletter via our online form.

All doctoral research students in the Health Faculties at King’s enrolled on a DClinPsy, MPhil, MRes, PhD, or other PGR degree, automatically receive monthly email updates from KCATO.

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Research Careers for Health Professionals: Introducing the NIHR

Wednesday 2 October 2024, 13:00-15:00 in person at Nevin Lecture Theatre, St Thomas' (and streamed online)

KCATO invited Prof Lucy Chappell to talk about clinical academic careers and specifically the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the government’s major funder of clinical, public health, social care and translational research.

Prof Chappell is the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Chief Executive of NIHR as well as Professor of Obstetrics at King’s College London, Honorary Consultant Obstetrician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

Recording of the lecture is available on the KCATO Hub (internal link). Colleagues in our Trust partners, please sign up to access here.

Engaging in Research Series

The recordings of the past sessions are available on the KCATO Hub (internal link). Colleagues in our Trust partners, please sign up to access here.

1) Demystifying Research – A webinar for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (NMAHPs) interested in pursuing research

Thu 10 October 2024, 10:00-11:00 via MS Teams

Have you ever wanted to know more about research? Have you wondered how to engage in research yourself? The session will provide you with the opportunity to have your questions about research answered by a panel of clinical academics across different health professions within King's Health Partners. We will cover areas such as benefits of research for clinical practice, how to get started in research and different ways of gaining research experience, and planning your career in research.

2) Research questions and finding a supervisor – A webinar for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals (NMAHPs) interested in pursuing research

Mon 14 October 2024, 16:00-17:00 via MS Teams

It can be difficult to know where to get started once you have developed interest in research. Many programmes and fellowships require the applicants to design a research project and to independently find supervisors to support their project. This session will provide you with clear guidance on how to best approach these tasks and submit a project to a pre-doctoral or doctoral fellowship competition.

The speakers include supervisors who are currently supporting health professional researchers as well as current students who have been successful in obtaining fellowships.

3) Top Tips on writing fellowship applications

Wed 23 Oct 2024, 13:00-14:00 via MS Teams

This short session will provide insights and tips on how to put together a competitive fellowship application, aimed particularly at health professionals who are making their first applications (e.g. for pre-doctoral or doctoral fellowship schemes).

This webinar is open to all types of health professionals and will offer broad guidance that can fit to many different funded fellowship applications, including NIHR, MRC, Wellcome and KHP CTM Pre-doctoral Clinical Research Excellence Fellowships and NIHR Maudsley BRC Preparatory Clinical Research Training Fellowships.

The speakers include colleagues who have recently secured competitive doctoral fellowships and academic colleagues who sit on funding decision panels.

4) Pitching for Funding

Thu 30 Jan 2025, Tue 4 Mar 2025, and Wed 7 May 2025, 09:30-12:00 via Zoom

The half-day online workshop is designed for clinical academics who already have an interview date (or are hoping to be called to a panel interview).  This session will help you to: 

• understand the components of a successful pitch
• design and deliver successful pitches to funding panels / interviews
• prepare for, and manage, the Q&A session effectively

The session will rely heavily on using real examples of successful pitches from researchers we have worked with in the past.  These range from PhD students to Professors and cover a broad variety of clinical disciplines.   

Please register for the webinar here.

121 Coaching Sessions for Health Professionals

The interactive one-to-one session will help you prepare for your fellowship interview. Delivered online by Simon Cain, the session will support you to create slides for your pitch, work on the presentation content, and help you prepare effectively for the Q&A. The appointments will be arranged at a time convenient to you, between you and the trainer during the academic year 2023/24.

Simon Cain is the owner of Westbourne Training & Consulting and specialises in presentation/pitching skills. He has supported over 400 candidates to prepare for interviews with funding panels over the past 10 years and has been successful with over 80% of the pitches worked on since 2013.  He has also delivered workshops to a wide range of audiences within health and research including the Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal Society, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Medical Research Council, Royal College of GPs, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Health Education England, numerous NHS Trusts and over 50 universities.

Please submit an application for 121 session here.

Writing for Health Professionals

Fri 29 November 2024 and Wed 12 March 2025, 09:30-17:00 via MS Teams

This one-day course is for health professionals across King's Health Partners (King's College London, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust, King's College Hospital NHS Trust) who are conducting individual research or working in a research team.

The morning session consists of a workshop with Stefy Vaga (CoFactor Science) about the publishing process in the health sciences. In the afternoon, participants participate in a pomodoro writing workshop with tailored support from Dr Verna Lavender (GSTT Head of Nursing for Research and Education in Cancer and Surgery).

Please register for the webinar here.

Networking and Socials

We are looking to arrange networking and social activities for health professional researchers across King's Health partners at least once per semester, further details to be available shortly.

King's Clinical Academic Training Office Team

At King’s we train the future generation of Health Professional research leaders across many disciplines.

Here, we introduce you to some of our Health Professional Researchers at King’s. We interviewed them to get an insight into their journey into a PhD and how they manage dual careers.

• Captain Lawen Karim - Vascular Surgeon
• Dr Sheila McSweeney - Dermatologist
• Professor Bijan Modarai - Consultant Vascular Surgeon
• Tootie Bueser - British Heart Foundation Cardiac Genetic Nurse
• Dr Graham Blackman - Training in General Adult Psychiatry
• Peter Chessum - Consultant Advanced Clinical Practitioner
• Freya Brown - Paediatric Diabetes Specialist Nurse