Scrubbed a heart surgeon’s extraordinary memoir of life, death and everything in between. Dr Nikki Stamp. 2022.

Raw, honest and compelling, Scrubbed is Dr Nikki Stamp’s account of her life as one of Australia’s leading cardiothoracic surgeons. A life lived at the very edge of murders medicine, where heart surgeons walk the thinnest of lines between life and death, and yet where the greatest challenge can be the medical system itself.

From childhood Nikki Stamp wanted to be a doctor. It was a calling, not a career. Her love for her vocation only grew as a medical student, and as a young registrar going through training rotations she fell, totally and utterly, for the hugely demanding speciality of cardiotoracic surgery. But alongside the excitement and enormous challenges of trying to make it in one of the toughest and most competitive fields of surgery came warning signs. Even in the operating theatre, where she felt most alive, she battled with sexism, enormous egos and at times outright bullying. And within the hospital system she lived with inhuman hours, chronic sleep deprivation and bureaucratic mismanagement that had a profoundly damaging effect on her life outside of work.