From 2000 to 2018, Lesley was a full-time pain specialist in the Lothian Chronic Pain Service, and remains an Hon Professor in the University of Edinburgh. In May 2018, she took up a new post as Professor of Pain Medicine, University of Dundee, and is an Honorary Consultant in Anaesthesia & Pain Medicine, working clinically in the NHS Tayside Pain Service. 

 

She has a particular interest in translational pain research: “Bench to bus–stop”: aiming to bring together basic scientists, clinicians, and population health scientists to address research gaps and improve pain management. One research focus is on how improved understanding of pain mechanisms and patient response to treatment can help us to move towards delivery of evidence based, individualized pain management.  

 

She co-leads the chronic Pain Research Group in Dundee (with Prof Blair Smith). Specific research interests include pain assessment and vulnerability to chronic pain; opioids in chronic pain; chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) and other neuropathic pain syndromes;  and effects of adverse childhood experience on chronic pain. She is part of a major new development in UK pain research: the Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (see https://www.ukri.org/news/new-data-hub-and-research-into-chronic-pain/) Specifically, she leads the CIPN Workstream of Partnership for Assessment and Investigation of Neuropathic Pain: Studies Tracking Outcomes, Risks and Mechanisms (PAINSTORM), is a work package lead on the Consortium on Pain Inequality (CAPE) and co-investigator for Alleviate (UK Pain Data Hub).  

 

She has been featured on Andrew Marr’s “Start the Week” on BBC Radio 4, discussing chronic pain and opioids (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fj9bq), and also on David Aaronovitchs’s “The Briefing Room” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004mgv) on “Does the UK have an opioid problem?”  

 

Other roles include:  

Vice Chair of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network, from Oct 2020. Chaired the SIGN Guideline development group for Management of Chronic Pain (SIGN 136, 2013), updated 2019.   

Editor for the British Journal of Anaesthesia (one of the top rated in its category) 2010 - 2021, remains on Editorial Board.

Member of the Scottish Government National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain (since inception, 2008).  

Chair of the NHS Research Scotland Pain Research Network (the Scottish Pain Research Community (SPaRC))/ Lead of NHS Research Scotland Pain Specialty Area, Member of NIHR CRN (anaesthesia, peri-operative medicine, and pain group).  

Member Medicines & Health Regulatory Authority, Opioid Expert Working Group.

Member of IASP NeuPSIG Management Committee.

She was previously Specialty Advisor for Chronic Pain, to the Scottish Government Chief Medical Officer. Through this role she co-chaired a new guideline for the Management of Chronic Pain in Children and Young People (http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2018/03/8609).