Polly Fitch
Clinical Psychologist working in Adult Critical Care at the Royal London Hospital
Dr Polly Fitch is a Clinical Psychologist working in Adult Critical Care at the Royal London Hospital in East London. Working in this role since 2017 she has responsibility for delivering psychological interventions for patients, relatives and staff in the Intensive Care Unit.
During the pandemic her role extended to providing support to an ICU that doubled in size of patients and redeployed staff, from 44 beds to 90, and from 250 staff to over 400. She has particular interests in talking about death and dying in acute health settings including how best to facilitate difficult news conversations and support end of life situations.
In addition to supporting staff wellbeing on the ACCU, she works with colleagues from across the Trust to provide this more widely, including facilitating Schwartz Rounds, Death Cafes, Wellbeing sessions for Theatres and Anaesthetics staff and the Barts Health Annual Bereavement Conference. She has previously held posts in the Tower Hamlets Palliative Care Team (with specialist input to respiratory services) and the Tower Hamlets Community Learning Disability Service, and retains strong links with health psychologists working across the borough.
She is a member of PINC-UK (Psychologists working in Intensive Care), the BPS and is HPC registered.