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= George Tippett = George Henry King Tippett AM (1 September 1927 – 20 March 2021) medical practitioner and anaesthetist, established the Dandenong Surgicentre, the first registered, accredited, free-standing, day surgical facility in Australia in 1982. [1]

Dr Tippett is known also for his public health and primary care work in disadvantaged populations, including remote Australian Aboriginal communities and overseas aid medical-dental projects in India and South-East Asia.

In the Australia Day Honours of 1990, he  was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for Service to International Relations in the field of medicine.

Education
George Tippett was born in Melbourne and educated at Geelong College. He studied engineering for three years at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology before moving to the University of Melbourne with a Queens College scholarship to study medicine, graduating in 1957 as MB.BS.

In 1965 Dr Tippett completed a specialist Diploma in Anaesthetics (DA) from the Nuffield College of Surgery in London.

Medical career
George Tippett began work as a medical practitioner in 1958 in the Commonwealth Department of Health in the Northern Territory. Based first at the Darwin Hospital, he transferred later in 1958 to Alice Springs, remaining there until 1961. Responsible for the government's Central Australian aerial medical services, as well as local and district medical services to Aboriginal communities and scattered non-Aboriginal populations, he restructured these services. He instituted daily two-way radio sessions and regular vaccination for children, travelling by plane and Land Rover to outlying Aboriginal settlements and stock stations. [2]

From 1961 to 1965, Dr Tippett was in General Practice in Leichardt, Sydney before moving temporarily to London to become a specialist anaesthetist. In 1966, with his young family, he travelling to Lebanon to take up a Clinical Fellowship in Anaesthesiology at the American University in Beirut. Using his engineering experience, he helped develop resuscitation and ventilation equipment for the support of neonatal, tetanus and polio victims. Following the 1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli War, he returned to London for a further 15 months clinical experience at St Thomas’s and Kingston Hospitals. There, he worked under Andrew Doughty in the research and development of epidural obstetric anaesthesia.

After returning to Australia in 1969, Dr Tippett joined an anaesthetic partnership in the Frankston and Dandenong areas of Melbourne, again using his engineering skills to build portable anaesthetic machines. He led the formation of the Dandenong Anaesthetic Group where, as Medical Director, he researched and established Surgicentre, the first registered and accredited day surgery facility in Australia. [3]

George Tippett’s principal legacy to anaesthesia and surgery is the pioneering of day surgery in Australia, first in Dandenong and Box Hill in Melbourne and then in Campbelltown NSW in 1984. The idea of a day surgery clinic was not initially supported in Australia. By 2017, there were over 300 such facilities, with 60% of surgery in Australia reported as ‘same -day’.

In later years, George Tippett continued his interest in remote Aboriginal Health service delivery, contributing to research by Colin Tatz [4] whom he had met in the early 1950s. In May 2000 he was interviewed by the Bringing Them Home oral history project following the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. From 1989 to 1992 he served as President of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Victorian section) which, at that time, also had responsibility for RFDS services in the Kimberley.

George Tippett retired from clinical work in 1992, aged seventy-one. He continued to serve the medical profession as president of the Victorian Medical Benevolent Association from 1999-2009. He was a Council Member of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association in 2002, and the AMA’s representative on the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation between 2003-2014.

Personal life
George Tippett was married to Helen Tippett from 1953 to 1974, with three children, Victoria, Ruth and Esther and four grandchildren. With his partner from 1976 onwards, Naomi Tippett (nee Jacobi), George was step-father to her four children and grandfather to her six grandchildren. Naomi – who founded Polyglot Puppets in 1978, a theatre group encouraging multicultural understanding – supported much of George’s philanthropic work through her long-standing engagement with OzChild and the association’s membership of the International Forum for Children’s Welfare.

Overseas Aid
George Tippett’s philanthropic work was influenced also by his early career experience in the Northern territory and encounters with Aboriginal elders who taught him respect for other cultures and how non-Aboriginal people could learn from engagement with such communities. He was inspired by his friend Ted Egan, then a project officer with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and a lifetime advocate for Aboriginal peoples, later to become Administrator of the Northern Territory (2003-2007).

In 1981, George Tippett joined the Rotary Club of Melbourne. For more than 20 years, with the support of the Club, Rotary International, government and private sponsors, he organised teams of volunteer doctors, dentists, nurses and community educators to provide medical and dental services. This work was done in collaboration with local authorities in Nepal, India, exiled Tibetan communities in Dharmsala and Mungod, and in several South-East Asian countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, Borneo and Cambodia. In the early 1990s, he assisted Professor Peter Katelaris in helping to control helicobacter in populations served by some of these programmes. [5-8]

In his aid work George Tippett encouraged his teams to appreciate what they were learning from other cultures and how they too changed as much as the communities with which they were working. This philosophy drove his philanthropic endeavour and kept him independent of the pull of ‘do-goodism’.

Awards and Honours
1990:              Order of Australia Medal – Service to International Relations in the field of medicine

1991:               Paul Harris Fellow Award for assistance in Melbourne’s hosting of the 1992-93 World Convention of Rotary International

1993-94:          Rotary International Service Above Self Award

1993-94:          Rotary Club of Melbourne Vocational Service Award for being ‘outstanding in ones’ field

1996:               The AsiaLink Sir Edward ‘Weary‘ Dunlop Asia Medal

1998:               Bronze Medal from the Chinese People's Republic Association for Peace activity on behalf of the Rotary International Asia Pacific Peace Forum

2005:               Knight of the Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta

2007:               Fellow of Australian Medical Association