Dr Caroline Shulman
GP and Researcher in Homeless and Inclusion Health
Pathway, UCL and Kings Health Partners
Dr Caroline Shulman is a clinician and researcher in Homeless and Inclusion Health. She is clinical lead for a hospital homeless Pathway team in London and previously worked as a general practitioner providing primary care in a specialist homeless practice.
Caroline is a Pathway Clinical Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Lecturer at University college London. She led a large qualitative study on Palliative Care in homeless people, in collaboration with the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department (UCL) and the homeless charities Pathway and St Mungo’s. This explored the challenges and barriers to accessing palliative care for this marginalized group, as well as potential strategies for improving care and support.
Recommendations from this research have been widely disseminated and shared with frontline staff, commissioners, policy makers and academics to try and facilitate change. Findings have contributed to reports from CQC, NHS England, Hospice UK and Faculty of Homeless and Inclusion health.
Caroline and her team are currently undertaking further work, evaluating the impact of twinning community palliative care teams with hostels as a way of facilitating a multidisciplinary approach to supporting people experiencing homelessness towards the end of their lives. They have also developed an on-line toolkit aimed at training and supporting frontline staff, which can be found at: www.homelesspalliativecare.com
