David Sellu
Author - Surgeon - Equality Advocate
UK Healthcare is in Crisis:
Reform must also address poor culture
"It will make uncomfortable reading but no one who cares about our healthcare - workers, users and planners - can afford to ignore what this book reveals"
"The NHS is failing not jut because of a lack of resources, but also because of a failure to learn, to admit mistakes and to change" - David Sellu
Surgeon and author David Sellu exposes the hidden cultural issues undermining the NHS - from systemic failures and institutional bullying to dangerous waiting lists.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
"A book which underlines the need for culture change in large institutions"
RM - Amazon review
Anyone working in the UK NHS and has a desire to improve the services ought to read this. The culture change needed is significant and improvements cannot be sustained without culture change. The lessons area generalisable to most large institutions/organisations.
"Why can we not learn from history"
Zola - Amazon review
The second book by David Sellu exposes the failings of management and regulators. A must read for all involved in healthcare delivery. Despite innumerable reviews and look backs, we seem incapable of learning from our mistakes. Shipman, Paterson, Letby. The list goes on.
"NHS failing"
Raymond Mcclelland - Amazon review
Comprehensive review of a failing NHS and why major issues are not addresses either quickly or fully and lessons are not learnt. Like David I have worked in the NHS (in my case in Northern Ireland) for 40 years and watched it deteriorate during that time. Complex and multi factorial but David has addressed it in a very sobering account.
David Sellu was a surgeon with a distinguished record extending over forty years.
In 2010, a patient died under his care in a private hospital. There followed a sequence of extraordinary events that led to David being prosecuted and convicted for the patient's death and sent to prison. His licence to practise medicine was suspended, his career cut short. Events that took place later showed that this was an unfair trial with tinges of racism, and he won an appeal against his conviction and is now a free man. But the damage had already been done.
This book tells his extraordinary story for the first time, in his own words.
Did He Save Lives? A Surgeon's Story
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
"A miscarriage of justice for a dedicated surgeon diligently doing a difficult job"
Shazia Kalsoom - Good Reads
Reading David Sellu's story, should send shivers down any practicing medics spine. There but for the grace of god go many in both NHS and private practice.
Here is a dedicated, caring surgeon highly commended by colleagues many of whom pay him the ultimate complement by entrusting their lives to his surgical abilities. Caught as a victim of circumstance trying to save a life and suffering as consequence of a hospital looking for a scapegoat and withholding vital information leading to his referral to a police investigation and subsequent criminal trial at The Old Bailey.
"Did he save lives?"
Roger Kirby - Trends in Men's Health
This fascinating, if sometimes harrowing, highly personal account should be required reading for all those who have an interest in patient safety. It tracks the journey of David Sellu from an impoverished childhood in Sierra Leone, to a successful and unblemished career as a colorectal surgeon in London, that was interrupted by his conviction and prison sentence for gross negligence manslaughter.
"There are no words"
JM2606 - Amazon review
Powerfully written with such dignity, humility and searingly painful honesty. A remarkable book documenting first hand a truly disgraceful miscarriage of justice. David Sellu, as a fellow medical professional, I stand with you, your family and all those who have supported you.
www.davidsellu.com  2025