Maria Buxton

PRSAS Clinical Lead

Maria is the clinical lead for the PRSAS accreditation programme. She is also the clinical lead and service manager for the West Herts Community Respiratory Service at Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust in Hertfordshire, which is a large integrated community respiratory service, providing nine respiratory services, including pulmonary rehabilitation (PR).

She qualified in 1988 at Kings College Hospital and then progressed through working mostly in London, but also USA and Australia. She joined Central Middlesex Hospital in 1997 as a clinical specialist, eventually becoming an integrated consultant physiotherapist in 2005, working across North West London Hospitals Trust. She completed an MSc in Cardio-Respiratory Physiotherapy in 2003 at UCL, and has been involved with PR since 1997, both as an acute provider and community. She led on PR with the London Respiratory Team in 2010, benchmarking PR services across London, and later led on PR within the London Respiratory Network and helped set up the London PR provider network.

Most recently she has been the quality lead for the PRSAS accreditation programme in 2021-2023, leading on assessor training, providing support to services on how to achieve accreditation, and has vast experience in accreditation assessments. She was also heavily involved with adapting services to accommodate COVID-19 and developing virtual care models.

Outside of clinical practice, she has been involved with BTS on the Education Committee, advised on BTS Hospital at Home Guidelines, and the CSP PRIME tool for PR commissioning.