By Josh Jennings
Perioperative nurse Dr Jed Duff says he remembers when he was a nursing student rotating through the operating theatre at Dubbo Base Hospital.
One day, he was observing a surgical procedure – though he couldn’t really see much of what was unfolding – when the surgeon saw him. Duff was told to scrub up and stand on the stool next to the surgeon, for a better view.
Duff could see that the patient, who had bowel cancer, had a massive tumour. Duff’s job, once the surgeon decided to put him to work, was to undo the clamps, take the tumour, wash it and put it in the specimen bucket for pathology analysis.