Dr Gillian McGauley

National Teaching Fellow 2009   Gill McGauley works clinically at Broadmoor, a high secure, hospital and academically in the Division of Mental Health at St George's, University of London. Forensic psychotherapy is a new sub-speciality which brings together two different branches of psychiatry; forensic psychiatry and psychotherapy. It involves the application of psychological therapies to treat mentally disordered offenders. In 1994 Gill was appointed to the first post in forensic psychotherapy approved by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Forensic psychotherapy did not have an established base in teaching, training or research. Over the last fifteen years Gill has developed forensic psychotherapy through postgraduate teaching, scholarship and research as well as establishing the first forensic psychotherapy service in the challenging environment of a high secure hospital. Gill has developed forensic psychotherapy nationally and internationally as Chair of the National Reference Group for Training and Education in Forensic Psychotherapy; through membership of postgraduate training committees of The Royal College of Psychiatrists, and through her work for the International Association for Forensic Psychotherap, as Secretary and as past President. As a Reader, Gill has made a major contribution to both postgraduate education in forensic mental health and to undergraduate teaching in psychiatry. She has had a significant role in developing national courses such as the Diploma and MSc in Forensic Mental Health. She has been Lead for Undergraduate Teaching in the Division of Mental Health and is Head of Year 1 of the Graduate Stream in medicine. She has developed innovative learning approaches such as an opportunity for undergraduate medical students to visit Broadmoor Hospital which provides students with the experience of communicating with hard-to-engage patients and aims to reduce stigmatising attitudes and improve the students capacity to empathise. Students have fed back that the visit has changed their attitudes to patients who have a mental disorder; feedback has included comments that the experience "made me think a great deal about the effects of illness on personality and on behaviour", "even extremes of violent behaviour" and that "the visit was one of the most useful and informative [ones], an eye opening visit. I felt quite inspired". Gill is part of a core team which attracted funding to develop an interactive web-based tool to help train professionals, especially those working in the Criminal Justice System who find it hard to access postgraduate training.