Dr Caroline Kamau-Mitchell

Overview

Highlights

• Kamau-Mitchell is one of very few academics to have influenced the way that medical doctors cope with work-related distress. She co-invented an app and board-game based on a randomised-controlled trial of doctors, and they are used by many NHS hospitals (e.g., the Royal Berkshire hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham, BARTS Health NHS Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, etc.). The board-game was developed in collaboration with the NHS Practitioner Health Programme, a confidential service for doctors and dentists in distress. She is passionate about disseminating research to the public, such as through articles about the science of mental health and work, reaching 0.30 million readers. Her research has been covered in newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times, and the BBC. Her research has been used by doctors’ associations in their understanding of occupational distress within areas of medicine (e.g., oncology), and to inform workplace support for junior doctors, surgeons, and other types of doctors. Her research has reached many clinicians, e.g., regularly getting lots of tweets by doctors.

  She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a member of Birkbeck's Centre for Medical Humanities. Her report for the House of Lords’ SLS Committee about an aspect of coronavirus legislation led to Parliament amending that legislation in January 2021. In May 2021, she contributed to a House of Lords Risk Assessment and Risk Planning Committee inquiry by giving evidence about the occupational health implications of long covid and projections about the impact on the UK workforce. 

  Dr. Kamau-Mitchell has written about how science can build research impact in Nature, the highly prestigious journal ranked in the top 10 of all academic journals worldwide with millions of readers.

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/16/doctors-turn-to-alcohol-food-and-drugs-to-cope-with-work-stress

  https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200331-how-to-eat-a-healthy-diet-when-work-from-home-coronavirus

  https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/17/alarming-number-of-cancer-medics-suffering-burnout-and-stress

Qualifications

• PhD, University of Kent, 2005
• BSc (hons) Psychology with Clinical Psychology, University of Kent, 2001

Administrative responsibilities

• Undergraduate Programme Director
• Chair of the Undergraduate Exam Board
• Module Convenor of a module about mental disorders in occupational contexts (Psychopathology and Work)
• Module Convenor of a module about social cognition and applied experimental psychology (Group Processes in Organizations)
• Supervisor of Master's (MSc) research
• Supervisor of doctoral (PhD) research

Professional activities

Dr. Kamau-Mitchell has given talks at many national and international conferences. She was invited to talk to oncologists about burnout at the CNS Bootcamp held at the University of Cambridge, 2018. She gave a talk at the global health conference at the University of Oxford, 2018; the 4th ICHWS conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 2014; the ACES conference in Hiroshima, Japan, 2015; the IACCP conference in Nagoya, Japan, 2016; and the I/O conference in Sydney, Australia, 2017.

She is a reviewer for prestigious journals such as JAMA Psychiatry, the Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the Journal of Affective Disorders, Stress and Health, Psychiatry Research, Schizophrenia Research, and more. She was the editor of the Wessex Psychologist Bulletin for a number of years, a hard-copy magazine with a readership of over 6,000 people per issue.

She is dedicated to taking science to the public in Psychology Today with her series about the Science of Mental Health reaching 0.3 million readers, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/experts/caroline-kamau-phd and regularly topping the readership charts.

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine

• MBPsS at the British Psychological Society.

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

• Member of the Birkbeck Centre for Medical Humanities

Research

Research interests

• I research the causes and consequences of occupational distress experienced by medical doctors. Using large dataset studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and randomised-controlled trials, I examine methods of reducing burnout, stress and mental disorders. I co-invented a board-game and apps used in hospitals and workplaces. I explore the usefulness of psychology in medical training/practice.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Academic, Centre for Medical Humanities

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I am a doctoral (PhD) and Master's (MSc) research supervisor. My past PhD students include Dr. Asta Medisauskaite, a senior research fellow at UCL's medical school, and Dr. Camelia Oancea, a machine learning engineer at Airbus Defence and Space. My current PhD students include Carolann Edwards OBE.

Publications

Business and community

I have media training.

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

• Stress, burnout, sleep problems and work-related signs of occupational distress among medical doctors
• Psychopathology (mental disorders), employees and work.
• The connection between work and health.