Personal Profile
She was a Senior Clinical Fellow in HPB and Transplant surgery at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, before being appointed as a Consultant Surgeon at Ninewells Hospital in 2019. Miss Coats was awarded a fellowship by the European Association of Endoscopic Surgery (EAES) at Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway in 2020, gaining further experience in open and laparoscopic HPB surgery.
Miss Coats completed a substantial body of research for a PhD in a novel imaging technique, Optical Projection Tomography, funded by the Medical Research Council (Technology) and the Melville Trust. Current research interests, through multi-centre collaborations, are focused on improving clinical outcomes of patients with pancreatic disease.
She has been a Consultant Hepatobiliary and Emergency General Surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary since 2020 and sub specialises in complex benign and malignant pancreaticobiliary disease.
Miss Coats' NHS practice involves pancreaticobiliary endoscopy including diagnostic UGI endoscopy, ERCP, spyglass and Endoscopic Ultrasound. Her elective operative practice includes laparoscopic and open pancreaticobiliary surgery, the management of simple and complex gallstone disease and abdominal wall hernias. She provides an emergency on call service at Glasgow Royal Infirmary for all acute general surgery presentations.
She has a particular interest in acute and chronic pancreatitis and was invited to co-author a book chapter on Acute Pancreatitis in Blumgart's Surgery of the Liver, Biliary Tract and Pancreas, published 2022.
Miss Coats leads at the primary Scottish recruitment centre for a UK National screening programme for hereditary pancreatic cancer and pancreatitis, EUROPAC, centred in Liverpool. She is the West of Scotland Lead on the National Cancer Recovery programme for pancreatic cancer funded by the Scottish Government.
Miss Coats is the Regional Surgical Advisor for the West of Scotland at the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh where she supports junior doctors wishing to pursue a surgical career. Through this role she has helped set up a free webinar teaching series and developed a new lecture series with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow for MRCS Part A examinations.
Miss Coats has an additional interest in the law and has completed an LLB in Scots Law and the Diploma in Legal medicine with the aim of raising awareness of legal issues that may arise in the healthcare system.
