Inside Wellington Hospital is a team brewing kombucha so its gelatinous by-product can be used as a stand in for human flesh and skin.

Two and a half years ago they heard people in Canterbury were using scoby to practise suturing skills, Macdonald said.

So she went down the road to KB Kombucha on Taranaki Street.

"I think he thought I was mad, but he gave me a starter with some scoby in it, which I took back to the hospital on the bus and we started from there."

Now anaesthetists, emergency department clinicians, medical school trainees, and nurses use scoby grown in the hospital to practice not just stitches but cricothyroidotomy (an incision to create a emergency airway), intravenous cannulation, and lumbar puncture (or spinal taps).