Did You Know?
In July 2000, the da Vinci Surgical System became the first complete robotic system cleared by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery in the United States. The surgeon sits at a console across the room and uses hand controls to guide the robotic arms.
How to Get Started
Getting started as a surgical technologist begins with the habits the job is built on: cleanliness, organization, attention to detail, and anticipating what someone else will need. None of that requires a hospital. It starts at home, at school, and in your community, with activities that let you practice the way a surgical technologist thinks.
Explore the Basics
Learn to wash your hands the way people in operating rooms do. With a parent, practice scrubbing every surface of your hands, including between your fingers, around your thumbs, and under your nails, for a full 20 seconds, then dry them and, from that moment on, do not touch anything that is not clean. Try making a snack or setting the table without breaking that rule. You will quickly discover how much thought it takes to keep your hands truly clean, and that is exactly the discipline surgical technologists practice every day.
Try It Out
Set up your own instrument tray. Lay out ten kitchen tools on a clean towel, such as tongs, a spatula, a whisk, and measuring spoons, and arrange them in the order a cook would need them. Then have a parent or sibling play the chef and call out each tool by name while you pass it to them handle first, without them having to look. When you are done, count every tool back onto the towel. Passing instruments and counting them is the heart of what a surgical technologist does.
Join the Community
Ask your school nurse or a family doctor if you can see the tools they use and learn what each one is for, and ask them what happens in an operating room. Many public libraries also carry picture books about hospitals and surgery, and some host visits from healthcare workers during career weeks. Talking with people who work in medicine is the first step toward picturing yourself there.