Target Healthcare REIT has appointed Dr Amanda Thompsell as an independent non-executive director.

Thompsell trained and originally practised as a GP before switching to working in old age hospital medicine, and then retraining in old age psychiatry. She has significant clinical experience of all aspects of caring for older people and has held a number of clinical and national leadership roles and a comprehensive knowledge of the care home sector. This included 17 years at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, where she led a multidisciplinary team supporting care homes for seven years and was the clinical lead for the long-stay older people’s mental health unit for a further five years.

Thompsell is the national specialist advisor: older people’s mental health at NHS England, a member of the advisory board to the Journal of Dementia Care, and a medical member of the First Tier Tribunal at the UK Ministry of Justice. She is also the previous chair of the faculty of old age psychiatry of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.