In his transformation role at NHS England, Paul Vaughan is pushing boundaries that hold nurses back – both outside and within the profession

Paul Vaughan found out ‘by accident’ that men could be nurses. Growing up in the Republic of Ireland he never encountered a male nurse and had no idea that such a being was possible. He worked for the civil service, then in a building society, and spent four and a half years training to be a priest before nursing even entered his head. ‘When I decided not to go ahead with the priesthood I went back to the building society and thought, “really, this isn’t what I want to do”.