Faculty
Dr Barnaby Hole
Senior Resident Kidney Doctor and NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in The Healthcare Needs of Older People. University Of Bristol and North Bristol NHS Trust
Barny is a kidney doctor and researcher – he took over from Professor Edwina Brown as lead for the UK Kidney Supportive Care Meeting in 2025. Barny is an advocate for the integration of palliative care and kidney medicine (https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(25)00069-9/fulltext). Barny brings clinical experience in kidney supportive care and advanced kidney care, with special interests in decision-support. Barny is interested in how healthcare systems can get the right balance between preventative treatment, management of disease, and care focussed on people’s quality of life. His PhD showed that older people with kidney failure will accept shorter lives if this protected their independence and decreased hospital visits, intrusion into the home, and time lost to treatment (https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538%2824%2900692-6/fulltext). This might mean that more people would opt for conservative kidney management, if they were supported to make decisions about their treatments based upon what is important to them, and the evidence of treatment benefits and burdens.
Dr Claire Douglas
Palliative Care Consultant, NHS Tayside, Scotland and Honorary Senior Clinical Teacher at Dundee Medical School
Claire is a consultant specialising in palliative medicine, who has worked in the speciality for over 20 years. Claire is the co-chair of the Non-Cancer subgroup of the Palliative and End of Life Care MCN in NHS Tayside and is passionate about integrated, joint professional working for patients with non-cancer health conditions. She joined the core faculty for the UK Kidney Supportive Care Meeting in 2025. Claire is passionate about improving care for people with advanced kidney disease. People with kidney disease have complex physical and psychological symptoms which are equitable to others with cancer. However, people with kidney disease do not have the same access to palliative care and often have poor end-of-life care. Claire has been the palliative care lead in developing a service in Scotland where palliative care is well integrated with renal medicine. She has recently returned from a Churchill Fellowship in the USA and Australia, learning about how integrated palliative and kidney healthcare services are developed. You can read about her experiences here https://kidneysupportivecare.substack.com/. Claire aspires to develop training in renal supportive care for trainee doctors in the UK.
Dr Emma Murphy
Associate Clinical Professor of Palliative Nephrology, Clinical Academic Nurse, Centre for Care Excellence, Coventry University, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust
Emma has 26 years of clinical experience in nephrology and palliative care Nursing across diverse teams and settings. She has been a core faculty member of the UK Kidney Supportive Care Meeting for over 10 years. Emma holds a PhD in palliative medicine from the Cicely Saunders Institute, King’s College London. She leads research at the interface between nephrology and palliative care, with particular focus on improving outcomes for patients with chronic kidney disease. She has published on the palliative care needs of renal patients, including on symptoms (https://apm.amegroups.org/article/view/125580/html), dialysis withdrawal (https://academic.oup.com/ndt/article-abstract/29/3/625/1865464?redirectedFrom=fulltext), and conservative kidney management (https://karger.com/nec/article-abstract/111/1/c74/831172/Understanding-Symptoms-in-Patients-with-Advanced?redirectedFrom=fulltext).
Professor Fliss Murtagh
Professor of Palliative Care, Hull York Medical School, Director of the Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre and an NIHR Senior Investigator
Fliss has been a core faculty member for the UK Kidney Supportive Care Meeting for more than 15 years. Her annual lecture updating delegates on the developments in kidney supportive care is always highly reviewed. She qualified in medicine in the UK in 1986 and undertook specialist training in palliative medicine after working as a GP for almost 10 years. Fliss completed her PhD at the Cicely Saunders Institute, King's College London on kidney supportive care. Fliss' research interests include palliative and end-of-life care needs, outcomes, and resource use, in particular for older people and those with non-cancer and multiple conditions, and especially advanced kidney disease. She is experienced in research methods: cohort and cross-sectional surveys, psychometrics, implementation and use of outcome measures, especially the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale. She has over 300 publications across a diverse range of interests (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1289-3726).
Wider Faculty
Virgina Aylett, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Hannah Beckwith, Imperial College London
Melanie Dani, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Aoife Lowney, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust
Andrew Mooney, Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust
Jacqueline Nevols, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust
Andrew Nixon, University of Manchester
Amy Verinder, North Bristol NHS Trust
Anna Winterbottom, University of Leeds
Emma Wiseman, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Hannah Young, University of Leicester
