Professor Ania Korszun

Professor Ania Korszun is Professor of Psychiatry and Education, Academic Lead for Medical Professionalism at Barts and The London Medical School, Queen Mary University of London and Consultant Psychiatrist at the East London Foundation Trust. She is Chair of the Undergraduate Education Forum at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Ania has a broad academic and clinical background. She is qualified in Dentistry and Medicine with a PhD in Immunology (London University) and trained in Psychiatry in the USA. In all her academic posts, in both the USA and UK, she has always demonstrated a strong commitment to undergraduate and postgraduate education. Her approach to teaching is fundamentally collaborative, integrating student concerns and experience into her teaching at every level and working with students in the evaluation of their programmes in innovative ways, which directly lead to improvements in the curriculum. Impact of work Ania's educational achievements particularly focus on developing new ways of teaching clinical skills, particularly communication in mental health, improving understanding of mind-body interactions and finally, raising awareness and overcoming stigmatising attitudes in healthcare. She has brought together a large inter-professional group to work on developing communication skills training resources for health care professionals aimed at reducing stigmatising attitudes to race, culture and gender that includes input from mental health service users. Professor Korszun has the incredible skill of combining academia, clinical skills and compassion and disseminating that in her daily work; she works incredibly well with some of the most marginalised people who experience the most stigma. Plans for the future Her study on Badmouthing, Attitudes and Stigmatisation in Healthcare showed that students are put off choosing a career in some specialties, such as psychiatry and general practice, because of stigmatisation. This has led to a national student-led Anti BASH campaign. She aims to continue her work on promoting student wellbeing through development of a new curriculum on developing resilience and professionalism in medical students to prepare them for challenging times of change ahead.