Rate My Professor Peter Pockney

Dr Peter Pockney is an Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy (Medicine) at the University of Newcastle, within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing. He concurrently holds positions as Conjoint Senior Lecturer in Surgery, Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Public Health, and Senior Lecturer at the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs. Since 2011, Dr Pockney has practiced as a consultant colorectal, general, and trauma surgeon at John Hunter Hospital and Newcastle Colorectal Surgery Australia. In 2019, he led a team awarded major funding to train the next generation of surgical researchers and reduce surgical infections. His academic background includes a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Southampton, UK; Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of London; Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Geography from the University of Exeter, UK; and a Postgraduate Certificate in Completion of Training in General Surgery from the UK Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board.

Dr Pockney's research focuses on clinical trials in surgery, colorectal cancer detection and screening, colorectal surgery outcomes, familial adenomatous polyposis, and neutrophil extracellular traps in cancer progression. His fields of research include surgery (50%), clinical microbiology (25%), and clinical sciences (25%). He investigates factors influencing surgical site infections, anastomotic leaks, gut microbiota alterations post-surgery, perioperative interventions, hereditary cancer biomarkers like circulating tumor DNA, postoperative opioid use, risk stratification in emergency laparotomy, and global disruptions to elective surgery during COVID-19. Select key publications include: "Preoperative Antibiotics and Mechanical Bowel Preparation Impact the Colonic Mucosa–Associated Microbiota but Not Anastomotic Leak Rate After Colorectal Resection" (2025, Diseases of the Colon and Rectum); "Long-Term Risk of Reoperation After Hypospadias Surgery in Childhood: A Data-Linkage Study" (2025, Journal of Urology); "The Microleaks study: 16S community profile and metagenomic shotgun sequencing signatures associated with anastomotic leak" (2024, npj Gut and Liver); "Combining sarcopenia and ASA status to inform emergency laparotomy outcomes: could it be that simple?" (2023, ANZ Journal of Surgery); "SARS-CoV-2 infection and venous thromboembolism after surgery: an international prospective cohort study" (2022, Anaesthesia); and the chapter "Finding Needles in Haystacks: The Use of Quantitative Proteomics for the Early Detection of Colorectal Cancer" (2019).