Nurse In The Outback. Sharon Kendrick

the operation site, which John Manners had marked on the patient’s skin in indelible ink the previous day.

      The gowned and masked surgeon stepped forward and generously washed the abdomen with the large wad of soaked cotton wool which Kate handed to him. This done, he held up his right hand, and she firmly slapped into it the scalpel she had ready. The initial incision was made—knife to skin—John Manners glanced up at the anaesthetist, who nodded, and the operation progressed.

      This was the part of the job which Kate loved the most. To a great extent the skills of a scrub nurse can be taught, but Kate had the extra qualities of anticipation and speed. During her theatre course she had purloined various surgical text books, reading up on basic procedures and familiarising herself with the normal sequence of steps in an operation.

      She watched John Manners’ hands closely and he soon found that he was able to hold his hand out for an instrument and she would put the right one there, without having to be asked.

      She judged Dr. Manners to be a competent surgeon—he worked steadily and neatly. Kate knew that the real test of a surgeon came, not during the routine operations, which ran normally and which he would have performed many times over, but during a surgical emergency when he would be required to use his initiative to make major decisions. A wrong decision could prove potentially fatal, and so the onus on the surgeon to predict correctly was enormous. Instinct might prompt him to play safe, but the irony lay in the fact that all the truly great surgeons took risks.

      However, there was no sign of any crisis as the list proceded smoothly. The two lipoma removals were followed by the varicose veins, which proved slightly more difficult to strip than John Manners had expected.