Dr Claire Rathwell was born and raised in London and graduated from King’s College School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1992. She completed her postgraduate training in Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia and Critical Care at Barts and across East London, and was appointed as a substantive Consultant at Barts Health NHS Trust in 2001.

In 2015, Claire was appointed as Clinical Lead for Anaesthesia at St Bartholomew’s Hospital to lead the development of the new Barts. Barts Heart Centre was created by combining all the staff and services from Barts, the London Chest Hospital, and UCLH’s Heart Hospital. It has become Europe’s largest cardiovascular centre, providing world-class cardiac care to the people of East London. Claire is currently a Consultant in Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia and Critical Care, and Clinical Lead for Anaesthesia at Barts.

Claire writes: “I have been honoured to recruit and lead a team of fifty consultant anaesthetists and subspecialists for Barts. Together, in addition to building our cardiovascular centre, we have made Barts a centre for thoracic, breast, and endocrine surgery and we have built an extracorporeal life support (ECMO) service for East London. We also support one of London’s largest cancer units here at Barts.

“Perhaps my greatest challenge professionally and personally at Barts was Covid-19. Barts was a vital part of London’s response to the pandemic and it provided great care for many seriously ill Covid-19 patients, as I know – I was one of them! Barts was also an ECMO life support centre and was the emergency cardiac surgery centre for the whole of London during the peaks of the pandemic.

“Over the last decade Barts has recovered from the challenging and difficult times of the Patterson report and I am proud to be a part of the hospital and now involved with the Guild.”

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