Obituary of Jenny Vaughan

Jenny Vaughan, who has died of cancer aged 55, was a neurologist best known for her courageous campaign to reform gross negligence manslaughter law and end the blame game in healthcare.

She fearlessly stood up for two doctors convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence: the surgeon David Sellu and the pediatrician Hadiza Bawa-Garba. Based on these suitcases, she and others set up the Doctors’ Association Great Britain and led his Campaign ‘Learn not to blame’ to establish a ‘just culture’ in healthcare, which has significantly reduced the number of investigations into this crime.

In 2013, Vaughan was surprised that Sellu, her colleague at Ealing Hospital in west London, was in Belmarsh prison, convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence. The colorectal surgeon also worked at the private Clementine Churchill Hospital in Harrow, north-west London, and was asked to examine a patient there with abdominal pain in 2010. A scan showed that the patient had a perforated intestine, an emergency situation, but Sellu could not operate immediately because the hospital did not have a suitable anesthetist or operating room. He operated later, but the patient, who also had liver cirrhosis, died two days later in intensive care. Sellu was tried at the Old Bailey in 2013 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

Vaughan contacted Sellu’s wife, who also worked at Ealing Hospital. They created a website, Friends of David Sellu, and began raising money, gathering evidence and rallying support.

Lawyers told Vaughan the chances of an appeal were minuscule. But she pressed on, seeking out new evidence not presented at Sellu’s trial, and when Sellu was released from prison in February 2015, he was given permission to appeal.

In November 2016, his conviction was overturned by three appeal court judges – not because of the new evidence, but on the grounds that the original judge had failed to properly direct the jury. What are the criteria for manslaughter by gross negligence in relation to healthcare? During Sellu’s original trial, it seemed no one knew – not the police, the coroner or even the judge.

Sellu said, “Jenny was a great warrior. Against all odds, she destroyed my business.”

Vaughan continued to speak out broadly, articulating the discomfort many felt. Can any healthcare worker be locked up for their hospital’s shortcomings or for making a simple mistake? Vaughan said health care workers should not be above the law, but the law needs clarification. She convinced people that there is no social benefit in hastily criminalizing doctors and that the bar should be higher: someone accused of this crime would have to have engaged in reckless behavior, which could include deliberately walking on the wrong side of the road. drive away.

Vaughan also supported Bawa-Garba, who was found guilty of the gross negligence manslaughter of a child, Jack Adcock, in 2015 and given a two-year suspended sentence. The General Medical Council took legal action to have Bawa-Garba permanently removed from the medical register, but the Court of Appeal ultimately ruled in her favor in 2018 and she was allowed to return to work the following year. As the case unfolded, reports appeared of concerns at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where Bawa-Garba worked, at the time of Jack’s death in 2011. These included lack of training, understaffing, huge workloads, gaps in the roster, IT glitches and more. Many trainee doctors in Britain were working under similar conditions and feared they could be next.

Following Bawa-Garba’s conviction, Vaughan had discussions with then Health Minister Jeremy Hunt and in 2018 he ordered a rapid policy review led by Prof. Sir Norman Williams. It has made many recommendations, including a threshold for what constitutes “exceptionally poor performance” that the Crown Prosecution Service and others should adhere to. Since then, the number of investigations into this crime has dropped to single digits.

Born in Bristol, Jenny was the middle child of Elizabeth (née Bessant), a nurse who later taught history, and Leslie Vaughan, a teacher. She attended Redmaids School, culminating in a school trip to Moscow in 1982. Two years later, she traveled solo by train through Iron Curtain countries to visit her pen pal in Hungary.

Vaughan subsequently studied medicine at the University of Nottingham. She graduated in 1992 and worked in Madagascar for a while before moving to London. In 1996-99 she studied for a PhD in the neurogenetics of Parkinson’s disease at University College London and became a consultant neurologist at Ealing in 2003.

Vaughan combined full-time work with activism: from 1998 to 2006 she was a Labor councilor in Fulham. She had a strong Christian faith and felt compelled to protest injustice wherever she saw it. In 2005, she and a fellow neurologist, David Nicholl, graphically performed force-feeding outside the U.S. Embassy in London, in protest against the practice used to keep prisoners alive at Guantánamo Bay. Vaughan called it “medicalized torture.”

She successfully led the resistance against the closure of Ealing’s emergency department in 2013, and in 2018 became a co-founder of the Doctors’ Association UK. During the Covid-19 crisis, she created an app that allowed frontline doctors to report shortages of personal protective equipment.

The same year, Vaughan received the BMJ editor’s award for “speaking truth to power” and in 2019 Bapio (British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin) presented her with an award in recognition of her support for BAME doctors.

In college she had met Matt Dunckley, who later became a surgeon. The couple married in 1993 and had two sons, Jonathan and Christopher. They had several pet turtles at home, as Vaughan had a lifelong love of these reptiles. A holiday to the Galápagos Islands to see giant tortoises was a special highlight for her.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and had to retire from the NHS in 2020 for health reasons. However, she continued to campaign and was appointed OBE in 2023.

She is survived by her husband and two sons, and her mother and her sister, Lise, and brother, Andrew.