Dr. Anna Spathis

Biography

Anna Spathis trained in hospital medicine, general practice, and palliative medicine, and has been working as a palliative medicine consultant in the NHS for a decade. Since 2019, she has been employed by the University of Cambridge, continuing her clinical work as an honorary consultant at the Cambridge Breathlessness Intervention Service, part of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Her research emphasizes brief, community-based complex interventions for managing intractable symptoms, specifically breathlessness and fatigue, which are often due to long-term conditions. She has a particular interest in developing educational tools for health professionals to assist in symptom management by providing treatment rationale and structure. Anna holds a position as Specialty Director for the palliative care clinical course within the Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine and is the Academic Lead for the East England Specialty Training Committee. She is extensively involved in delivering postgraduate education focused on the management of chronic breathlessness. Her MD thesis encompassed a series of studies culminating in a project that focused on co-designing an age-appropriate fatigue intervention for young cancer patients. Additionally, she is involved in developing and evaluating conceptual models that describe the vicious cycles of emotional and behavioral responses to breathlessness and fatigue, which explain symptom perpetuation and facilitate intervention.

Research Interests