Congratulations to Dr Cherry Kilbride, who has been awarded a Fellowship from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.  Dr Kilbride is based at the Royal Free Hospital where she is in charge of growing the trust’s research and practice development for Allied Health Professionals (AHPs). Cherry was awarded the Fellowship, the highest possible accolade from her professional body, ‘for her significant contribution to the understanding, dissemination and application of evidence based practice in stroke rehabilitation, through her research and through the education of others’.

Dr Kilbride spent nine years as the lead national physiotherapist on the Intercollegiate Stroke Working Party at the Royal College of Physicians London, ,and contributed to the development of National Stroke Clinical Guidelines and the National Sentinel Stroke Audit Programme (SSNAP). 

Dr Kilbride joined the Royal Free as a clinical specialist in neurological physiotherapy in 1995, later becoming deputy head of therapy services, and also undertook her PhD on the Royal Free Hospital stroke unit before leaving to pursue academic work at Brunel University London. She has now returned to the Royal Free Hospital.

“I feel like I’ve come full circle,” said Dr Kilbride. “The Royal Free Hospital helped grow me and now my job here is about facilitating research with AHP colleagues across the trust, circumnavigating the world of research and development. It is an honour to be recognised by my peers with this Fellowship but I’m also really excited about where the research undertaken at the Royal Free Hospital will take us in the years to come.”