We are proud to announce that Dr Jenny Vaughan and Dr Robert Hirst have joined the executive committee, as Law and Policy Lead, and Secretary respectively.
Dr Jenny Vaughan giving an interview outside the Royal Courts of Justice as Dr Hadiza Bawa Garba’s appeal
Dr Jenny Vaughan has been a Consultant Neurologist for 14 years. Jenny was the medical lead for the successful over-turning of the conviction of Surgeon Mr David Sellu for gross negligence manslaughter in 2013. This rare achievement was recognised by a national Modern Law Award for the Sellu medico-legal team in January 2018.
She has supported Hadiza Bawa-Garba for a number of years ( with others) and has worked with Team Hadiza towards winning the recent appeal against her erasure instigated by the GMC. She does not believe that the adversarial nature of the criminal court is the right place to determine who is responsible for complex healthcare-related deaths. Recent prosecutions have been exclusively of BME doctors and she believes this should be of great concern to all.
Jenny has authored many commissioned articles on gross negligence manslaughter (GNM) and is a regular speaker on this subject both nationally and internationally. She has also worked with thousands in healthcare who have supported the campaign to restore to Dr Bawa-Garba to the medical register. She has contributed to the recent reviews into GNM by the government and the GMC. She also worked, with others, to ensure that recent sentencing guidelines for GNM recognised the challenges for those in frontline healthcare. She co-founded the first UK online resource for anyone to access who wishes to know more about the charges of gross negligence manslaughter in healthcare.
As an individual she wishes to work with DAUK in order to facilitate a shared understanding of the problems created by recent prosecutions in healthcare and help promote their campaign of “Learn not Blame.” She cares passionately about the NHS and has previously campaigned to highlight the safety issues created by large hospital reconfigurations. She served as a local councillor for 8 years in a busy London borough and had a specialist health portfolio. She has personal experience of what it’s like to be a patient using the NHS and therefore understands how vital patient safety is for both patients and doctors.
You can follow Jenny on Twitter at @DrJennyVaughan.
Robert is an ACCS Emergency Medicine trainee (newly) based in Bristol. He was a representative for the BMA and served on the local organising committee during the Junior Doctor contract dispute.
Rob organised local industrial action and conducted local and national media interviews during the industrial action (occasionally post-nights!) He is a dedicated advocate for the NHS and for safer, fairer working practices.
Rob has spent five years working in frontline specialities and has seen the strain placed onto an under-staffed, cash-strapped, morale-sapped healthcare system. This has motivated him to become more involved in grass-roots activism.
On joining DAUK Rob said, ‘For too long, we have let others set the agenda. We need an active body that campaigns on behalf of patients, doctors, and the NHS.’
DAUK were overwhelmed with the standard of applications we received and we would like to thank every doctor who applied.
