Gillian Hanson

Gillian Coysh Hanson FRCP FRCA (25 March 1934 – 23 May 1996) was a British physician who specialised in intensive care and the treatment of diabetes mellitus. She established and led the intensive care unit at Whipps Cross Hospital from 1968 to 1993.

Career Gillian Coysh Hanson was born in 1934 to John Hanson, a metallurgist and chemist. The ICU at Whipps Cross became an international exemplar of intensive care, and Hanson co-authored the first textbook on intensive care therapy. In 1984, Hanson co-wrote a book entitled The Critically-Ill Obstetric Patient with Roger Walter Middleton (R.W.M) Baldwin; the book is featured in several medical libraries.

Hanson later became interested in parenteral nutrition, obstetric medicine and diabetes mellitus, and in 1993 she left the intensive care unit to work on the treatment of diabetes in the community and at a specialised diabetic care centre at Whipps Cross Hospital.

Affiliations and memberships Hanson was appointed as an examiner of the Royal College of Physicians, and was a fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

Personal life Hanson married Roger Farrand, with whom she had three children. They resided in the London Docklands. Right after her retirement in 1996, she and her husband embarked on a trek to Everest Base Camp in the Himalayas, after which she developed pneumococcal sepsis, and her husband developed pneumonia. Hanson died soon after from septicaemic shock; "she was a world expert on the management of this condition".