Ombudsperson
Professor Sheila Payne is a health psychologist with a background in nursing. She holds an Emeritus Chair at the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland
During her career, she established and managed three research groups; the Health Research Group at the University of Southampton (1996-2000), the Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group, University of Sheffield (2003-2006) and the International Observatory on End of Life Care, Lancaster University (2009-2014). She was President of the European Association of Palliative Care (2011-2015). She has worked closely with many international organisations including the World Health Organisation to improve palliative care.
She has designed and led a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled ‘Improving Palliative Care in Care Homes ’ in 2021 with over 4000 participants from more than 104 countries and will be launching a new MOOC ‘Dying well: the role of palliative care and sedation’ on 16 th October 2023. She was presented with the inaugural EAPC/Cecily Saunders Foundation Life-time Achievement Award in October 2020.
Professor Payne has a long track record in palliative care research and scholarship. Her research focuses on palliative and end-of-life care for older people. She has been involved in nine European Commission funded international projects, including three current ones. She has supervised over 40 PhD students. She has been appointed as external examiner to over 60 PhD candidates in the UK and internationally. She has published widely in academic and professional journals with over 700 outputs, and published 16 books.
