Dame Suzy Lishman
Chair, Lead for Safeguarding and Serious Incidents
Dame Suzy Lishman DBE is a consultant histopathologist and medical examiner in Peterborough, and has been involved with NCEPOD since 2005. She was appointed as a Trustee in 2019 and Chair in 2024. Suzy is a past president of the Royal College of Pathologists and Association of Clinical Pathology. She has a particular interest in patient safety, colorectal cancer and public engagement, and holds a number of trustee and chair roles within healthcare and veterinary medicine.

Associate Professor Jane Greaves
Honorary Treasurer
Jane Greaves is a registered nurse, Associate Professor and Associate Head of School for Healthcare and Nursing Sciences (Research & Knowledge Exchange) at Northumbria University, where she leads strategic initiatives to enhance research capability, interdisciplinary collaboration, and evidence‑based practice across health‑focused academic programmes. With a career grounded in improving healthcare quality, patient safety, and professional education, Jane brings extensive experience in research leadership, clinical workforce development, and the translation of academic insight into real‑world healthcare impact. Her work focuses on advancing standards of care through rigorous inquiry, innovation, and system‑level thinking. As a Trustee and honorary Treasurer of the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD), Jane contributes her academic and clinical expertise to support the organisation’s mission of driving quality improvement in patient care across the UK. She is committed to ensuring that learning from national reviews translates into meaningful improvements in clinical practice, service design, and patient outcomes.

Dr Paul Butterworth FRCSEd(urol)
Paul undertook his medical training at the University of Nottingham, graduating in 1990. He completed his training in surgery in the East Midlands, including a Doctor of Medicine thesis in kidney transplantation at the University of Leicester. Subsequently, subspecialist training included a year in Sydney and short attachments in the USA and Germany. As a Consultant Urologist, he subspecialized in prostate and kidney cancer and took a particular interest in service improvement. Alongside a private surgical practice, Paul was the Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee at the Spire Leicester Hospital for ten years, giving him an insight into strategic thinking within the independent sector. To NCEPOD he brings experience of medical practice across a wide range of frontline settings and an understanding of the influence of NCEPOD reports on clinical practice and healthcare systems more widely.

Professor Frances Healey
Frances is a registered nurse with over 40 years of clinical, research, leadership, patient safety, and quality improvement experience, initially in NHS trusts, then regionally, and nationally. She has led research in incident data, pressure ulcer prevention, falls prevention, venous thromboembolism, and suicide deaths. Since retirement from full-time work, Frances is a non-executive director in an NHS trust, a visiting professor at the University of Leeds, and advises on several patient safety-related research studies. Frances has valued her links with NCEPOD for over 25 years, back to an era when she was working in a national organisation that took over their commissioning, and she had to write an extensive report explaining what NCEPOD did!

Professor Namita Kumar MBChB MD MMEd FRCP FAcadMEd Postgraduate Dean Consultant Rheumatologist
Involvement in medical education started when Namita was a doctor in training. In 2003 Namita was appointed as a board member of the Postgraduate Medical and Education Training Board, the first UK regulator of Postgraduate Medical Education. In 2010 she was appointed as Foundation School director for Northern Deanery, in 2013 to the post of Postgraduate dean for HEE NE and in 2019 Regional Postgraduate Dean for HEE North East and Yorkshire. She was made an Honorary Clinical Professor by Durham University in 2014, Newcastle and Sunderland Universities, as well as UCLAN in 2017. She was a council member of the Academy of Medical Educators 2014-2017, and a Councillor then Trustee Councillor of Royal college of Physicians from 2017-2022. She was appointed as a trustee for NCEPOD in January 2022, and has been the Co-chair of English Postgraduate Deans since 2020. Namita was appointed to the new role of National Dean for PGMDE Risk and Business Oversight in Dec 2023. Areas of interest include Quality Improvement, Governance and Regulation.

Zudin Puthucheary
Zudin Puthucheary is a Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the William Harvey Institute, Queen Mary, University of London, and a Consultant at the Royal London Hospital Adult Intensive Care Unit. His research focusses on acquired functional disability and skeletal muscle physiology, and specifically the use of metabolic and exercise interventions to prevent and treat acute muscle wasting. He is a nationally elected Council member of the Intensive Care Society (UK) and was the inaugural chair of the UK National Post-Intensive Care Rehabilitation Collaborative, a multi-professional cross-disciplinary group focussing on rehabilitation and restitution of critical illness survivors. He is the Chief Investigator of the ASICS-II and ASICS-TBI trials, investigating the efficacy of ketogenic feeding in preventing muscle wasting and secondary brain injury.

Kathy Wilkinson FRCA, DCH, MRCP
Kathy is a retired anaesthetist and clinical co-ordinator at NCEPOD (2008 to 2022). Most of her clinical practice entailed specialist and general paediatric anaesthesia but she also undertook a share of general and emergency work in a large university hospital in East Anglia. From 2011 to 2013 Kathy was President of the Association of Paediatric Anaesthetists. Currently alongside her Trustee role at NCEPOD she volunteers with a charity supporting families and witnesses attending the coroner’s court, and at a busy community art gallery.