Operating room no easy place to work

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Christy Carpenter, a Technology Center student in the school’s surgical technology program, practices preparing surgical instruments. (Will Stewart photo)

“Scalpel.” “Suction.” “Clamps.” These operating room commands are answered on TV and in real life by surgical technologists: highly trained professionals without whom successful surgery would not be possible.

Training for this in-demand occupation can be found locally at the Tennessee Technology Center at McMinnville, which has offered a certified surgical technology program for the past seven years.

Surgical technologists play a vital role in any operating room. Their responsibilities begin before surgery as they must prepare the operating room for the surgeons by ensuring everything in the room, instruments and people, is sterilized. During surgery, it is their job to hand instruments to the surgeon and perform tissue retraction and suction of wounds. After surgery, they must apply dressings to any incisions and clean the operating room and instruments.

Mistakes made by surgical technologists could potentially cause great harm, or death, to patients.

“It’s tough and it’s stressful,” said program director and registered nurse Trish Merlo. “People’s lives are in our hands so we don’t compromise on skills. We want quality people out there and we feel that by the time they graduate they are. They know what to do and they know how to do it.”

The 12-month program teaches students both the classroom knowledge and practical skills necessary to succeed as surgical technologists. Merlo said the first half of the program is toughest, with students taking such rigorous classes as anatomy and physiology, microbiology and pharmacology. The second half, while still difficult, is spent by students primarily in clinical settings, such as hospitals. Before graduating, students must scrub, or sterilize, at least 125 operating rooms in the clinical setting.

To get a job as a surgical technologist, graduates must first pass the National Certification Exam. The Technology Center’s graduates have a 100 percent pass rate on the exam.

For those students who complete the program and pass the exam, actually getting a job is usually no problem at all. “Only 50 percent of positions are being filled (nationwide). If they (graduates) want a job, and they’re willing to travel, jobs are there. And they are capable of making exceptionally good money,” said Merlo, adding several make more than she does.

In years past, she said, graduates have gone on to become surgical technologists all over Middle Tennessee, including at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, as well as River Park Hospital here and other hospitals in surrounding cities.

The next surgical technology class is set to begin next June. For more information call the Technology Center at 473-5587.