Dr Agnes Ayton
Chair, Eating Disorders Faculty
Dr Agnes Ayton is a consultant eating disorder psychiatrist in Cotswold House Oxford, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Oxford.
Dr Ayton is on the GMC specialist register for psychiatry, neurology and child and adolescent psychiatry, and has been specialising in eating disorders since 2003, gaining extensive experience working both with children and young people and adults of all ages in different settings.
Dr Ayton has a longstanding commitment to improving patient safety and quality of care, and has published on these topics. More recently, she completed a national survey and review of eating disorder training during medical education, which received a
research impact award from Beat, the leading eating disorder charity in the UK. She has been working with various stakeholders to improve medical education regarding eating disorders, which is essential for improving patient safety.
Dr Ayton has taken on various roles for the College since 2007. She served on the QNIC Executive Committee and the QNIC-ROM advisory group, and was a lead reviewer for QNIC for many years, and contributed to setting standards and national research on outcomes.
She was a co-author of the first edition of the ‘Junior MARSIPAN’ Guidelines.
She has been a CASC examiner since 2008 and the deputy chair of the MRCPsych Paper B Clinical Topics Panel since 2016. She has been the Treasurer of the Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group since 2016.
She was the Vice Chair of the Faculty of Eating Disorders since 2015, and led the College response to the NICE Guidelines and Quality Standards for eating disorders. She has written the Faculty’s proposal for national outcome measurements. She also worked with the RCPsych media department, supporting their campaign against mental health cuts, and raising awareness of eating disorders.