Medic does operations carefully for starters (3)

I believe the answer is:

doc

'medic' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)

'does operations carefully for starters' is the wordplay.
'for starters' says to take the initial letters.
The initial letters of 'does operations carefully' is 'DOC'.

(Other definitions for doc that I've seen before include "Physician (colloq.)" , "GP (informal)" , "GP (colloq.)" , "Main dish" , "One of the seven dwarfs" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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