Jenny Vaughan, who has died aged 55 of most cancers, was a guide neurologist greatest identified for her brave campaigning to reform the legislation on gross negligence manslaughter, and finish the blame recreation in healthcare.
She fearlessly championed two medical doctors convicted of gross negligence manslaughter: the surgeon David Sellu and paediatrician Hadiza Bawa-Garba. On the again of those instances, she arrange with others the Medical doctors’ Affiliation UK and led its “Be taught Not Blame” marketing campaign to realize a “simply tradition” in healthcare, which helped to scale back considerably the variety of investigations into this crime.
In 2013, Vaughan was astonished that Sellu, her colleague at Ealing hospital, in west London, was in Belmarsh jail, convicted of gross negligence manslaughter. The colorectal surgeon additionally labored on the non-public Clementine Churchill hospital in Harrow, north-west London, and in 2010 had been requested to evaluation a affected person there with stomach ache. A scan confirmed the affected person had a perforated bowel, an emergency situation, however Sellu was unable to function right away because the hospital didn’t have obtainable an acceptable anaesthetist or working theatre. He operated later, however the affected person, who had liver cirrhosis as effectively, died two days later in intensive care. Sellu was tried on the Previous Bailey in 2013 and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail.
Vaughan contacted Sellu’s spouse, who additionally labored at Ealing hospital. They created a web site, Pals of David Sellu, and began elevating cash, combing proof and drumming up help.
Legal professionals suggested Vaughan the possibilities of getting an attraction off the bottom have been minuscule. However she pressed on, digging up contemporary proof that had not been offered at Sellu’s trial, and when Sellu was launched from jail in February 2015, he was thereby granted depart to attraction.
In November 2016 his conviction was quashed by three attraction courtroom judges – not due to the brand new proof, however on the grounds that the unique decide had not correctly directed the jury. What are the factors for gross negligence manslaughter as associated to healthcare? It appeared at Sellu’s unique trial, nobody knew – not the police, the coroner and even the decide.
Sellu stated: “Jenny was an incredible warrior. She overturned my case in opposition to all the percentages.”
Vaughan continued to talk out extensively, articulating the unease many felt. May any healthcare employee be incarcerated for his or her hospital’s inadequacies or for making a easy mistake? Vaughan stated healthcare employees shouldn’t be above the legislation, however the legislation wanted clarifying. She persuaded those that there isn’t any societal profit to hurry to criminalise medical doctors and the bar ought to be greater: somebody accused of this crime ought to have exhibited reckless behaviour, equal, for instance, to intentionally driving down the incorrect aspect of the highway.
Vaughan additionally supported Bawa-Garba, who in 2015 was discovered responsible of the manslaughter of a kid, Jack Adcock, via gross negligence and was given a two-year suspended sentence. The Normal Medical Council took authorized motion to get Bawa-Garba completely struck off the medical register, however in the long run the courtroom of attraction present in her favour in 2018 and he or she was allowed again to work the next 12 months. Because the case unfolded, experiences emerged of considerations at Leicester Royal Infirmary, the place Bawa-Garba labored, on the time of Jack’s demise in 2011. These included lack of coaching, understaffing, enormous workloads, rota gaps, IT failures and extra. Many junior medical doctors within the UK labored in the identical circumstances and nervous that they could possibly be subsequent.
Following Bawa-Garba’s conviction, Vaughan had discussions with the then well being secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and in 2018 he ordered a fast coverage evaluation carried out by Prof Sir Norman Williams. It made many suggestions together with a threshold for what constitutes “exceptionally unhealthy efficiency”, which the Crown Prosecution Service and others should adhere to. Since then, the variety of investigations into this crime has fallen to single figures.
Born in Bristol, Jenny was the center youngster of Elizabeth (nee Bessant), a nurse who later taught historical past, and Leslie Vaughan, a instructor. She attended Redmaids college, a spotlight of which period was a college journey to Moscow in 1982. Two years later she travelled solo by practice via iron curtain nations to go to her penpal in Hungary.
Vaughan then studied medication at Nottingham College. Graduating in 1992, she hung out working in Madagascar earlier than transferring to London. In 1996-99 she studied for a PhD within the neurogenetics of Parkinson’s illness at College Faculty London and have become a guide neurologist at Ealing in 2003.
Vaughan mixed working full-time with activism: from 1998 to 2006 she was a Labour councillor in Fulham. She had a powerful Christian religion and was impelled to protest in opposition to injustice wherever she noticed it. In 2005 she and a fellow neurologist, David Nicholl, graphically enacted force-feeding outdoors the American Embassy in London in protest on the apply getting used to maintain detainees alive in Guantánamo Bay. Vaughan damned it as “medicalised torture”.
She efficiently spearheaded opposition to the closure of the accident and emergency division at Ealing in 2013, and in 2018 got here the co-founding of the Medical doctors’ Affiliation UK. Within the Covid-19 disaster, she created an app for frontline medical doctors to report shortages of PPE.
The identical 12 months Vaughan obtained the BMJ editor’s award for “talking fact to energy” and in 2019 Bapio (British Affiliation of Physicians of Indian Origin) gave her an award in acknowledgement of her help of BAME medical doctors.
At college she had met Matt Dunckley, who later turned a surgeon. The pair married in 1993 and had two sons, Jonathan and Christopher. At house they’d a number of pet tortoises, as Vaughan had a lifelong love of those reptiles. A vacation to the Galápagos Islands to see large tortoises was a specific spotlight for her.
In 2017, she was recognized with breast most cancers and in 2020 she needed to retire from the NHS on well being grounds. She stored campaigning, nonetheless, and was appointed OBE in 2023.
She is survived by her husband and two sons, and by her mom and her sister, Lise, and brother, Andrew.
