Dr Armstrong trained as an undergraduate in Dundee Scotland and as a postgraduate in Edinburgh and Oxford. She undertook her subspecialty pain training at Oxford and Bart’s Hospital London.

She has been a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pain Management since 2006, and her first consultant post was at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire. She then moved to Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin, Morayshire, where she set up a pain clinic and was involved in providing anaesthetic and local pain services to the remote and rural population of the North East of Scotland including the Orkney Islands.

Dr Armstrong was appointed to York Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in 2011 and has had a busy NHS consultant practice in both anaesthetics and pain since that time, which includes full participation in weekly clinics, theatre lists and the on-call rota.
She has been the Clinical Lead for York Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust pain services since 2017. 

Dr Armstrong has had an active private anaesthetic practice since her appointment in York. In this role, she assesses and treats patients with wide-ranging pain presentations, including acute spinal and musculoskeletal pain, neuropathic pain, pelvic pain, cancer-related pain and complex regional pain syndrome.

She currently works as the Clinical Lead for pain services for York and Scarborough NHS Hospitals Trust and has been doing so since 2021. As Clinical Lead, she strategically manages pain services across the trust and their integration with community services. She is responsible for leading a full multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and psychologists. 

She can offer advice on management, order and interpret MRIs, liaise with therapists and surgeons, offer spinal and other injections to aid rehabilitation including radiofrequency ablation, and implant spinal cord stimulators and intrathecal catheters when appropriate. She undertakes all forms of anaesthesia including ultrasound-guided regional blocks.