Feb 5 - A bit of practice surgery

In the unlikely event that someone is seriously ill or injured and
needs an operation, then of course the only medically trained person
at Mawson is the single doctor (that's me).

In order to have some assistants, 4 of the expeditioners have had 2
weeks of training at Hobart Hospital before we left, learning how to
be anaesthetic nurses or theatre nurses. By the end of that two
weeks, they had done a marvellous job and we ran through a pretend-
operation which went very well, and even made the TV news that night
in Tasmania.

That was 4 months ago, so as a refresher, we did another mock
operation today in the Mawson medical facility. One of our dodgy
expeditioners needed an operation (he had accidentally swallowed one
of his crampons), so we prepared him for theatre, got all the
equipment ready and then anaesthetised him and cut him up. It was a
bit of a rush job, as we needed to be done in time for lunch but I
still found time to take out his spleen and kidney as well, just for
good measure.

From left we have Matt, the IT guy, then Jasmine the chef, the
victim is Hully, who has been teaching us how to survive in the great
outdoors, then me and on the right is Nathan, one of the
electricians. The photographer is Andrew, the met observer, whose job
here was to be scout nurse.

We may not have been the slickest surgical team in the world, but I
think I've seen worse...

p