She was educated at home, and later at North Foreland Lodge and Somerville College, Oxford,[3] where she studied medicine under Charles Sherrington and J.

Woolf described her as "an attractive woman; competent, disinterested, taking blood tests all day to solve abstract problems".

[4][5] As a young pathologist at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital in 1938 she initiated the creation of national blood banks in London, setting one up with Federico Duran-Jorda.

She also served on the Royal Commission on Equal Pay, as a founder trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, and for one year as chairman of the Oxford Regional Hospital Board.

[1] Vaughan was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1957 New Year Honours.