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Bruce Clifton was born 7 September 1928, at Braeside Private Hospital, Stanmore New South Wales, as the only child to Edward Charles Clifton and Jessie (nee McGregor). His Korean army records (1953) state he was '5’ 9" with brown hair and gray eyes'. Bruce Clifton never married and died on 6 March 2017.
Bruce Clifton attended Newington College from 1935 to 1942, Sydney Grammar School from 1942 to 1945, and the University of Sydney from 1946 to 1951, from which he graduated MBBS (Hons II) in 1952. He was a Junior Resident Medical Officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) in 1952, then spent a year (1953) as a Captain in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps in Korea and Japan. In 1954 he spent most of the year in general practice in association with Dr Grace Perry, the well regarded Australian poet who was married to Dr Harry Kronenberg, a well known RPAH haematologist, then in late 1954, Clifton returned to RPAH as a Senior Resident Medical Officer in anaesthesia.
In 1956, he obtained the two-part DA and was elected MFARACS. In 1958, he obtained the MRACP, and was elected to FRACP in 1972, and to FFARACS in 1975. He remained at RPAH as a full-time specialist and Clinical Superintendent of Operating Theatres until his retirement in 1990. He was Honorary Medical Officer to the Royal Life Saving Society Australia (RLSSA) from the late 1950s until his retirement and was awarded the RLSSA Meritorious Service Medal in 1959 for helping the RLSSA and the Surf Life Saving South Australia SLSSA to redefine their resuscitation procedures to mouth-to-mouth respiration. This followed a demonstration, by Clifton, on volunteers from the RLSSA of the various methods, then in vogue, when compared to mouth-to mouth respiration, and then demonstrated again for the International Convention on Life-saving Techniques in Sydney in March 1960. This was the subject of an ABC documentary in June 1959, and all 12 volunteers were awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours for 1960/61.
Clifton was also a long-term consultant to the NSW Red Cross Transfusion Service. Clifton also set up the Tetanus Unit at RPAH from 1959 and 1960, which enabled patients to be ventilated, later this unit admitted drug overdoses requiring ventilation, and subsequently became the ICU for RPAH. Clifton initially bought ventilators and other equipment for this Unit from his own funds. He was also responsible for establishing cardiac anaesthesia and perfusion at RPAH.