Lesley Goodburn

Biography

Lesley Goodburn has a personal passion for storytelling from a personal and professional perspective. In 2014 her husband Seth was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer and was told he has days maybe weeks to live, he died 33 short and heart breaking days after diagnosis. Six months after Seth's death Lesley obtained his medical records as part of the grieving process and wrote down what happened on each of the 33 days along with letters to healthcare professionals explaining what it felt like to be her or Seth on certain of the 33 days. The letters and the journey were used to create a play, a film and an educational resource called Seth's story. These were shared to help with educational in health and social care and to improve compassionate person and family centred care. 

In her professional roles as experience of care lead for provider improvement and national clinical programmes she initiated a programme of storytelling across the provider network training over 150 people in storytelling, taking stories to the NHS England national quality board and initiating 4 programmes of national policy work from two digital stories. 

She has just moved to a new role as Head of Public Involvement and Engagement at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence where her storytelling passion will help influence a wider use of stories and narrative as a data source to combine with quantitative and qualitative data to initiate improvements in care.

She is also interested in all areas of creativity including pottery, poetry, creative writing, performance, and dance to help share the experience of care of staff, patients and carers to improve compassionate person and family centred care.