DAUK are delighted to see that Dr Jenny Vaughan has been honoured with an OBE in the King’s New year’s honours list. Her work has centred around highlighting the importance of a ‘Just Culture’ within the NHS, in the wake of what happened to Mr David Sellu and Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba. Between 2013-2016 she led David’s ultimately successful appeal against conviction for gross negligence manslaughter at a time when cases were rising against healthcare workers. She was instrumental, with others, in drawing national and international attention to the injustice of what happened to Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba and calling for a fairer analysis of the whole system rather than making scapegoats of vulnerable individuals.
More recently she has worked to assist many more healthcare workers who have fallen victim to injustice in the NHS, especially those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, such as Dr Manjula Arora. She has also drawn attention to the plight of international medical graduates working for private locum agencies in unfair conditions. Much of this work has been done as part of the team at the Doctor’s Association UK and is continuing. If you would like to support our work please do consider becoming a member of DAUK https://www.dauk.org/membership/
Dr Vaughan said today:
“I am truly humbled and grateful that our work on ‘Just Culture’ which is so important has been recognised. I accept this award on behalf of my whole team. This includes all of those who supported the journey to overturn what happened to both David and Hadiza and those who have supported our more recent work on seeking basic standards of fairness in the workplace for international medical graduates and anyone under unfair sanction. Our ‘Learn Not Blame’ campaign calls for renewal of the core values in the NHS that promote learning from adverse events and prioritise fairness, openness and the wellbeing of both patients and health care professionals. It seeks to empower everyone working in healthcare to do what they can within their own sphere of influence to ensure a better NHS to work in and one that is also better for patients. Everybody recognises that a just culture is what we should be achieving in the NHS.”
Dr Jenny Vaughan
