Caroline has specialised in integrative healthcare for over 30 years both in the National Health Service in the UK and charitable sector. She has also supported executives in the business sector. For around 20 years, she was Clinical and Research Director at a national UK breast cancer charity, providing and evaluating integrative oncology approaches including mind-body interventions and complementary therapies support . Her long-standing expertise in psychosocial support, nursing and integrative medicine and research enabled her to lead teams of health care professionals, counsellors, complementary therapists and researchers. Her last NHS role was as the first Nurse Consultant in Cancer Rehabilitation at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. She is currently part-time CEO for a London based cacer support charity. She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her contribution to breast cancer support services in 2014.
Her professional trainings includes a PhD in mindfulness, a degree in social work, intensive care nurse training, Traditional Chinese acupuncturist, shiatsu practitioner, aromatherapist, reflexologist, mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher, and certified mindful self-compassion teacher, retreat leader and supervisor . She has recently become an EMDR practitioner, a powerful tool to work with trauma and PTSD.
Involved in integrative medicine since 1987 when she worked in the intensive care setting, she published her first research in 1994 in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, having evaluated the benefits of aromatherapy massage on post cardiac surgery patients. Her doctoral research showed significant benefits from the mindfulness-based stress reduction programme (MBSR) in people affected by breast cancer and was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2012 and she has published numerous service evaluations on the effectiveness of integrative approaches in breast cancer. Caroline continues to teach 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion courses both in person and online and lead retreats nationally and internationally. In December 2022, she published the first service evaluation looking at the benefits of Mindful Self-Compassion in breast cancer in the Journal of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.
Caroline enjoys supporting people facing serious illnesses, both mental and physical, including cancer and other life threatening diseases. Alongside their medical treatments, she wishes to help them feel as well as possible, no matter what they may be facing. She also supports family and friends.
She frequently speaks at national and international conferences on integrative approaches to cancer.