Michelle Hills Biography

Dr Michelle Hills is a Cambridge University educated doctor (Gonville and Caius College, MBBChir MACantab) who has undertaken subsequent postgraduate degrees in palliative medicine and in medical education (Cardiff University, MSc and PGCME).

 

Working within the NHS as a hospital consultant and as Chief Medical Officer for a children’s hospice within the charitable sector, Michelle has been privileged to work alongside thousands of children with complex medical problems where it is known they are likely to die early. She has worked tirelessly to manage symptoms so that whatever the future holds, a child can be comfortable. She has entered people’s lives at their most scary and vulnerable moments and helped them recognise and plan for a future which previously seemed unimaginable. She works together with families to try to find a way through illness. She navigates criss-crossing paths hoping for positive outcomes and preparing for tragic ones. She has sat with families as their children have taken their last breath. She has arranged transfers of children out of hospital to allow them to die in their place of choosing. She has been alongside families when children have been taken off ventilators when the machines are no longer able to save them.

 

As a practising doctor she tries to do her best for every one of her patients but to have a greater impact she has also trained and works as a medical educator, contributes to medical research and sits on national palliative medicine organisations. She is currently Chair of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Paediatric Palliative Medicine Advisory Committee.

 

Having given speeches to fundraisers, at dinners and at the Houses of Parliament, she has realised that to make the biggest difference to all children and families she needs to share her experience and learning with the public through mainstream literature.