Dr William Shanahan

Biography

I graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1980. I trained first as a GP in Ireland before joining the Irish Eastern Health Board Psychiatric Training Scheme. I completed my training in St. John of God’s Hospital in Dublin and St. Vincent’s Hospital in Elm Park in Dublin. I came to the United Kingdom in 1987 and worked for a year at The Priory before researching in Community Psychiatry in Buckingham where I was looking after patients with schizophrenia in their homes. 

In 1989 I joined the Westminster and Charing Cross Training Scheme and completed my higher  training there. I was appointed a Consultant Psychiatrist specialising in addictions in 1992 and managed the first complex needs clinics in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in that year. I am currently Lead Clinician of the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust’s Addictions and Offender Care Directorate. I joined the Capio (or Charter as it was then) Nightingale Hospital Group in 1992 and became Medical Director here in the year 2000.

I remain a general adult psychiatrist with a special interest in looking after people with substance problems. Through this, I also manage people dependent on analgesics or those having problems with pain management.

I chair the hospital’s Clinical Governance Committee and also the Medical Advisory Committee and I advise the Hospital Managers on policy and procedures.