Meet The Team
DAUK Leads
Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden
President
@sbattrawden
Sammy is a Senior Registrar in Emergency and Intensive Care Medicine in the South East. She founded DAUK in January 2018 and was the Chair until August 2019. Sammy now runs the organisation as our President.
Sammy has a unique appreciation for the NHS; after her son was born at 27 weeks, Sammy spent a very difficult 3 months on site with him in Intensive Care at a tertiary centre miles from home. Joshua is doing well now, but the experience has made Sammy all the more determined to fight for the NHS. Sammy is currently working as a HEMs doctor with an air ambulance as well as a frontline intensive care doctor during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has a seat on the Women in Intensive Care Medicine committee at the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine as well as a role as training and welfare representative on the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Medicine PHEMTA committee.
She has a keen interest in doctor wellbeing and her research has been in moral injury and the decline of empathy on which she gave a TED talk.
Sammy previously held a role with the BMA and a seat on the LNC. A passionate advocate for the NHS, Sammy has been interviewed on national television, appearing on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News, and is a regular guest on Good Morning Britain. In addition Sammy is a frequent guest on national radio including BBC Radio 4 Today and PM, BBC Radio 5 live and LBC. She has also written for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Metro, The Guardian and the BMJ.
Dr Rinesh Parmar
Chairman
@GasDocRP
Rinesh is a Specialty Registrar in Anaesthetics in the West Midlands. He became more involved in grassroots activism around the time of the 2016 Junior Doctor contract dispute.
He has served on a number of local negotiating committees across the West Midlands and has held a number of positions at local and national level with the British Medical Association.
Rinesh organised local industrial action and has conducted local media interviews during and since the industrial action. Rinesh has been interviewed on national television and international television, appearing on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky News and CNN. He has appeared on Good Morning Britain in addition to radio programmes such as BBC Radio 4 Today, BBC Radio 5 Live and LBC. He volunteers for two charities, serving on the governance committee for one. He has a keen interest in Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine which he maintains by regularly attending emergencies across the West Midlands.
He is passionate advocate for better working conditions for UK doctors and campaigns for mental health support for healthcare workers. Rinesh also campaigns for the preservation of the NHS as a publicly funded, free at the point of use universal healthcare system.
Rinesh is a frontline doctor working both in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. He has served on the DAUK Executive Committee as both Treasurer and Vice-Chair and became the Association Chairman in August 2019.
Executive Committee
Dr Natalie Ashburner
Vice-Chair & Social Media Lead
@nashburner
Natalie currently works as a specialty doctor in Psychiatry after completing her core psychiatry training and gaining membership to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
She was in her first year of foundation training during the Junior Doctor Contract dispute and industrial action and her involvement in the strikes led her to take a more active role in representing doctors at a grassroots level.
She was on the RCPsych psychiatry trainees committee and South East division trainee representative from 2018-2020.
Working in psychiatry, Natalie is particularly passionate about the mental wellbeing of doctors and the effects that working in a high pressure, strained environment like the NHS has on them.
Her day to day job often means working with some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in the UK, reinforcing her belief that the NHS must always be free at the point of need.
Dr Jenny Vaughan
Vice-Chair & “Learn not Blame” Lead
@DrJennyVaughan
Jenny 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 (GNM). This rare achievement was recognised by a national Modern Law Award.
She has supported Hadiza Bawa-Garba for a number of years and has worked towards winning the recent appeal against her erasure. 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 of BME doctors and she believes this should be of great concern to all.
Jenny has authored many articles on GNM and is a regular speaker on this subject internationally. She also worked 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 she leads and promotes the 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.
Dr Jenny Vaughan has also fought against the closure of frontline services in her local hospital.
Dr Rebecca Lewis
Co-Secretary
@drrebeccalewis
Becky is a Fellow in General and Oncoplastic breast surgery in London, and is due to take up a Consultant post in Summer 2021. She is currently completing her masters and has undertaken training in medical leadership. She has been a mentor to medical students hoping to become surgeons through a national scheme since 2011, and was vice chair of the national breast surgical trainees group from 2017 to 2018. She has been involved in campaigning since the junior doctor contract dispute of 2016.
After a particularly horrible training experience, she has a keen interest in bullying and believes that this practice has no place in the NHS. She also has an interest in supporting whistleblowers and has shown a keen interest in our ‘Learn not Blame’ campaign. Outside medicine, she has been a member of the field of play athletics team for the World Championships and World Para-athletics Championships in London and spends most free time with her 2 year old son, Sebastian.
Dr Zainab Najim
Co-Secretary & GP Advisory Board
Zainab is a GP trainee based in Norfolk. Outside of clinical areas, she has particular interests in medical education and pastoral care for medical students and practising doctors. She is especially keen to bridge the attainment gap amongst ethnic minority medical students and to tackle both racism and sexism within the NHS.
She joined DAUK outs of a desire to put doctors at the forefront of changing the narrative within healthcare, and out of a passion to save a currently withering NHS.
Outside of medicine (and a pandemic-ridden world) she enjoys travelling, painting and writing – but sadly not all at the same time right now.
Mr Dolin Bhagawati
Editorial Team Lead
@grumpybraindoc
Dolin has trained in Neurosurgery over the last decade having qualified from Oxford and UCL. He is currently engaged in research into novel surgical drug delivery in Paediatric brain tumours and neurological disorders.
He has a particular interest in Immigration and health, and has had experience dealing with stressful immigration issues for his family. He is passionate about improving conditions for NHS staff and patients having had close members of his family treated for critical conditions.
Dr Duranka Perera
Treasurer & Editorial Team
Duranka is an FY2 In the East of England, currently working in A&E. He is a representative for Junior Doctors at his hospital, with experience handling the implementation of national contractual changes at a local level.
He maintains several active research interests in neurosurgery and health policy, with ongoing projects at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Using his passion for writing, he prepares scripts for the national neurosurgery platform Brainbook, educating students and doctors alike on various elements of clinical neuroscience. He is also a published poet and short story author.
Working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis has stirred his desire to see wider adoption of the principles of efficiency and transparency within the NHS. To him the safety of patients and his fellow colleagues is paramount. Through working with DAUK, he hopes to advocate for them so that at a grassroots level, their voices, ideas and desires can be represented on a national scale.
Dr Vinesh Patel
Membership Secretary & GP Advisory Board
Vin has been a frontline GP since 2012 and a GP partner since 2016. He has also been the clinical lead for cancer for his CCG since 2015. He is a director of the Sutton GP services Federation and has a desire to protect the NHS and what it stands for: that being a publicly funded universal healthcare system that is available to all UK residents equally no matter their financial circumstances or status. He is passionate about ensuring that primary care remains at the heart of the NHS and that continuity of care remains key alongside focusing on proactive health promotion. He is also keen to provide insight to the public and change the media and public negative perception of our profession and the NHS that is often spread by different stakeholders.
Miss Anna Sutton
Medical Student Representative & Social Media Team
Anna is a fourth year medical student, whose studies have been cut short during the Covid-19 crisis. Next academic year she plans to complete a Masters in Healthcare Ethics and Law. When choosing University projects she invariably picks the artiest option possible, last year completing an essay on the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” and how far it followed guidance on portraying suicide. She presented this as a poster in November 2019 at the Northwest Psychiatry conference.
Anna is interested in discussing mental health within the medical profession, and has created a mental health pin-board within the University, for students and staff to share their experiences in creative ways. She hopes this will help start conversations about mental health early in medical students’ careers and reduce stigma.
Social Media Team
Dr Natalie Ashburner
Core Psychiatry Trainee
Miss Anna Sutton
Medical Student
Dr Matt Kneale
Social Media & Editorial Team
Matt is an FY1 doctor working in Manchester. Prior to medical school he was involved in global health research and part of the team that pushed for better access to essential antimicrobials globally. His main clinical interests are acute general medicine and infectious diseases, whilst outside of medicine enjoys photography, playing guitar and travelling.
Recent high profile controversies such as the Junior Doctor Contract dispute in 2016, and the Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba case, have led to him becoming a vocal supporter for the rights of medical professionals and is eager to push for better safeguards for doctors.
Miss Freya Rhodes
Social Media Team
Freya is a fifth-year medical student at the University of Sheffield. Last year, she intercalated in Humanities, Philosophy and Law at Imperial College London.
She joined as a student member during the 2019 general election, inspired by the DAUK’s grassroot advocacy for frontline doctors. Freya is particularly interested in making healthcare politics more accessible to medical students and supporting a just culture within the NHS. She is also a member of the Institute of Medical Ethics student council and recently completed a research project on the ethics of student volunteering during the covid-19 pandemic.
Freya has not yet decided on a speciality interest but hopes to continue her studies in Medical Law.
Dr Roshni Shah
Social Media Team
Roshni was born and raised in London, moved to Prague to complete her Medical degree and is now back in London working for the NHS. She is passionate about advocating for Junior Doctors, in particular those from a BAME background of International Medical Graduates. Most recently she has been working as a Junior Clinical Fellow in A&E in London and is applying for ACCS EM training.
She has been interested in understanding how healthcare systems work in other countries and has therefore spent time working in hospitals internationally including India, Tanzania and Argentina. She also completed a summer internship in Business Development at Stanford, California which launched her interest in Medical Technology.
During her spare time she enjoys baking and playing (attempting) the Ukulele.
Dr Kaveri Jalundhwala
Social Media & GP Advisory Board
Kaveri is a GP ST2 in Bucks who is passionate about defending doctors and their right to safe working practices, particularly after the 2016 Junior Doctor Contract. She was previously part of DAUK’s editorial team, and after noticing the problems on the frontline during the coronovirus pandemic, decided to rejoin DAUK to help in anyway possible. She is interested in health care leadership and was part of an innovative programme utilising a group of junior doctors to come up with ways to transform the local outpatients service. She plans to explore roles in leadership and improvement in General Practice in the future.
Areas of particular interest include: women in medicine, general practice and its link with secondary care, expedition medicine, mental health and the perspective of being a patient (having had medical issues in the last year). Having straddled 2 cultures, being from an Indian background, lived in Singapore for 9 years, and then moved to England – I feel quite passionate about ensuring there is a diverse and accepting culture in the NHS.
Dr Pushpo Babul Hossain
Social Media Team
Pushpo is a junior clinical fellow in Acute Medicine in South London. She joined the NHS a year ago and is an International Medical Graduate from Bangladesh.
She is currently working on front line Covid wards and doing medical on calls. She holds a seat as the locally employed doctor representative at the BMA Local Negotiation Committee.
She is passionate about advocating for the rights of International Medical Graduates (IMG) as she is one herself and joined DAUK to be the voice of fellow IMGs. She is currently involved in medical education of IMGs in her Trust to help them tackle the cultural shock once they join the NHS and is well liked amongst her peers.
Outside medicine her interests lie in poetry, travel and comedy (specializes in mimicry and impromptu jokes)-because a day without laughter is a day wasted.
She is known to have an activist streak in her personality and has strong opinions which she voices fearlessly. She stands by DAUK as she believes it comprises passionate individuals like herself and also recognises IMGs for what they bring to the NHS.
Dr Emily Yeung
Social Media Team
Emily is an ACCS acute medicine trainee currently based in the North East of England.
Her interest in advocating for junior doctors for a voice on the national platform recently started amidst discussion surrounding training pathways during the core medical curriculum transition. Joining the DAUK social media team coincidently allowed her to put her amateur passion of graphic design to use. Through working with the DAUK, she also hopes to help establish a greater presence for the organisation in the North, to ensure that doctors throughout different regions are supported and their voices heard.
Dr Oliver Lauridsen Siaw
Social Media Team
Oliver joined DAUK because he wanted to be part of a movement made up of people who genuinely want to make a difference, to stand up for safer working conditions and to be part of a change to the health service and the lives of junior doctors and their welfare. Doctors have suffered enough mentally and physically from a broken system. The dignity, pride and perks we deserve have been slashed. It’s time to retake what we’re due.
Miss Anna Sigston
Social Media Team
Anna is a medical student studying at the University of Manchester. She is currently intercalating between 3rd and 4th year, reading Women’s Health at KCL.
After working in ITU during the COVID pandemic, she became increasingly passionate about advocating for health care workers with regards to PPE, burnout and mental health support. This inspired her to join the DAUK, where these challenging topics are not only discussed but enacted upon. Through working with the DAUK she hopes that medical students will have a greater voice, when looking into key issues and policy changes.
Outside of medicine she enjoys baking, attempting new sports and travelling (when pandemics permit).
Editorial Team
Our team of frontline doctors who write feature articles and create content on behalf of DAUK.
Dr George Oommen
GP Trainee
Dr Richard Gilpin
Junior Doctor-Care of Older Adults
Mr Felix Brewer
Core Surgical Trainee
Mr Dolin Bhagawati
Neurosurgeon & Lead Editor
Dr Katie Sanderson
Clinical Fellow
Dr Matt Kneale
FY1 Doctor
Abilash Sathyanarayanan
Dr Ellen Welch
GP
Dr Duranka Perera
FY2 Doctor
Dr Katie Sanderson
Editorial and “Learn not Blame” Teams
Katie is a Junior Doctor in London. She first became aware of DAUK through the work of Jenny Vaughan, and feels strongly about various aspects of medical culture, including whistleblowing, inflexible and poor quality training, and the way that errors by doctors are investigated. She feels that many issues that are problematic for doctors in training are also problematic for patient safety.
Miss Zoe Brandon
Editorial Team
Zoe is a final year medical student interested in health policy and medical education. She is new to the DAUK team, having being inspired by their work advocating for healthcare workers’ safety over the pandemic.
During her intercalation in Infection and Immunology, she was involved in global health research on antiretrovirals in pregnancy, which started her interest in public health.
In the past she has worked on the repeal of the Vagrancy Act, which criminalises homelessness, as part of the Coalition Against Homelessness (CAH) student group. She feels passionate about the power of collectivity and solidarity among healthcare workers to effect change.
Mr Felix Brewer
Editorial Team
Felix is a core surgical trainee in the East of England with an interest in Plastic Surgery. Prior to becoming a doctor, he undertook a Master’s degree at Oxford University focussing on age related disease.
He is involved in a number of junior surgical committees, with particular focus on improving working conditions for trainees and enhancing access to training opportunities.
Felix became involved with DAUK during the Covid-19 pandemic, amidst concerns regarding the lack adequate protection for healthcare staff. He has worked with the group to help raise public awareness of these issues, and create a platform for colleagues to share their concerns.
He is also interested in the impact the current pandemic has had on other functions of the NHS, particularly cancer pathways and diversion of resources. Part of the exit strategy needs to include greater focus on these neglected aspects of healthcare, in order to avoid secondary peaks in mortality.
GP Advisory Group
Our team of frontline GPs and GP trainees advocating for primary care.
Dr Vinesh Patel
GP Partner
Dr Elizabeth Toberty
GP
Dr Kaveri Jalundhwala
GP Trainee
Dr Zainab Najim
GP Trainee
Dr Ellen Welch
OOH GP
Dr Rosie Shire
GP Partner
Dr Claire Ashley
Portfolio GP
Dr Elizabeth Toberty
GP Advisory Team
Lizzie has been a GP for almost 3 years and whilst recognising it can be crazily stressful, nothing beats getting the care right for our patients.
She has a keen interest in leadership and is a North East organiser for Next Generation GP. It is her belief that we need to both inspire future doctors to choose GP as a career but also make our working culture better to draw them in, which is partly why she’s here at DAUK!
At work she loves all things women’s health and all the complex interaction in GP between the physical and the mental.
Dr Ellen Welch
GP Advisory & Editorial Teams
Ellen is a GP based in Cumbria. She spent the pandemic working from home as remote GP for an NHS Out of Hours provider/111, while also looking after her little boy. She has worked in various roles both within the NHS and overseas since qualifying, including a season as a Ski field Medic in New Zealand, an expedition doctor climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and over ten years as a Senior Ship’s Doctor on cruise ships around the World. She is a published author and has written several books about the NHS as well as an award winning workbook to help GP Registrars pass their clinical exams.
She joined DAUK out of a desire to improve conditions in the NHS for staff and patients alike.
Dr Claire Ashley
GP Advisory Team
Learn not Blame Team
Our volunteer team working towards a just culture in healthcare.
Dr Jenny Vaughan
Consultant Neurologist
Dr Ben Evans
Foundation Year Doctor
Dr David Nicholl
Consultant Neurologist
Dr Saurabh Bahl
Core Psychiatry Trainee
Dr Katie Sanderson
Clinical Fellow
Dr Ben Evans
Learn not Blame Team
Ben is CT1 Anaesthetics training who has just finished a year doing COVID ITU in the North of England. Working on the frontline in a COVID-19 ICU, he has a firm appreciation of the role of PPE and feels obligated to get involved to help protect his colleagues.
He is passionate about support both contractually and pastorally for Junior Doctors. Ben is involved at a local level at implementing projects to improve support services overnight for doctors.
Dr David Nicholl
Learn not Blame Team
David is a Consultant Neurologist working in Birmingham.
Dr Robert Hirst
Robert is an ACCS Emergency Medicine trainee 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.
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.
Membership Engagement Team
Dr Natalie Ashburner
Core Trainee Psychiatry
Dr Vinesh Patel
GP Partner
Dr Kevin Kuriakose
FY3 Doctor
Dr Emily McDonald
FY2 Doctor
Dr Alex Vallakalil
CT2 Doctor – Psychiatry
Dr Ayan Basu
Dr Kevin Kuriakose
Membership Engagement Team
Kevin is an FY3 doctor currently working in Manchester. He works as a part of DAUK’s membership engagement team.
Kevin joined DAUK after seeing the terrific work of the organisation, specifically that of the ‘Learn Not Blame’ campaign. He believes strongly in the importance of nurturing a just culture when it comes to medical error in the NHS. Cases such as those of Mr David Sellu and Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba highlight that systemic failures are often blamed on individuals and seldom organisations.
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitates protections for healthcare professionals who are working in increasingly strained settings. Kevin looks forward to working with DAUK, which speaks out and lobbies on issues affecting doctors.
Dr Alex Vallakalil
Membership Engagement Team
Alex is an international medical graduate from Kerala, India training in Psychiatry at Oxford. Alex has served as Councillor for his University Union and also remained as Coordinator for the Indian Medical Student’s Association in his State.
He has also served as Junior Doctors Representative for Oxford Junior Doctor’s Forum in Psychiatry. He is keen on focusing towards issues around work place based experiences and rights of international graduates working across the U.K.
Alex has personally come across colleagues who were bullied at work, have faced burn out or have been subject to racism. By working for DAUK he would like to advocate for further understanding of such issues.