Professor Tara Rampal MBBS FRCA

Biography

A clinician who builds services, not just studies them

Tara is a practising NHS Consultant Anaesthetist with a long-standing interest in prehabilitation and telehealth: preparing patients physically and mentally before surgery and cancer treatment, so they recover faster and more safely.

She trained at the Barts and The London School of Anaesthesia, where she completed a research fellowship in high-risk surgery and received the Excellence Award for Academic Achievement in 2008.

At Medway NHS Foundation Trust she founded the Prehab Unit, which grew into Kent & Medway Prehab. The unit won the ERAS® Society award for the best perioperative success story in 2019, was rated Outstanding in the Trust’s 2020 CQC inspection, and became a case study in NHS England’s Perioperative Digital Playbook.

She now leads the Perioperative Prehab Unit at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, where she developed the cardiopulmonary exercise testing service and prehabilitation across surgical groups, supported by a three-year Health Inequalities Grant from NHS South East London ICB. She also founded QuestPrehab, which brings digital prehabilitation to patients across the NHS and internationally.

Tara completed the Leadership in Population Health programme at The King’s Fund, supervises anaesthesia residents and PhD students, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich since 2022. She speaks regularly at national and international conferences on prehabilitation and innovation in healthcare.

Education

Qualifications

• MBBS
• FRCA — Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists
• Excellence Award for Academic Achievement — Barts and The London School of Anaesthesia, 2008
• Leadership in Population Health — The King’s Fund, London

Research & teaching

Research and teaching

Principal Investigator on the COPE study (2020), POISE-3 (2019, opening the first UK site) and PREPARE-ABC (2018). Author of peer-reviewed research on prehabilitation, telehealth and health inequalities.

Supervises and mentors anaesthesia residents and PhD students in prehabilitation.

See research and publications →