News & Information - The Mercury - May 2008 Mercury

Story and photo by Elaine Wilson
Fort Sam Houston News Leader

	Instructor Staff Sgt. Zulaika DeLeon teaches Pvt. Darcy Quimby how to scrub-in for surgery using the scrub sinks at Dunlap Hall of the AMEDD Center and School. The new building, which is equipped with the latest equipment and ample room for training, opened last October.

Up front and in the spotlight, surgeons are often revered by patients and grateful Family members for their lifesaving skills and knowledge.

However, other lifesaving medical professionals are working just as hard out of the spotlight and behind the operating room doors.

The Army's 68 Delta operating-room specialists are responsible for everything from holding retractors and passing instruments to sterilizing equipment and preparing specimens for the lab.

Their tasks may sound simple compared to a surgeon's, but, in their case, looks are deceiving.

"If an operating-room specialist isn't doing his or her job correctly by maintaining sterile technique, then infection rates in the hospital will rise," said Lt. Col. Kathleen McArthur, chief of the 68 Delta branch at the AMEDD Center and School.

McArthur oversees the operating-room specialist training program. The program, which comprises two phases, trains about 400 students a year. The first nine-week phase consists primarily of classroom instruction that culminates in a 72-hour field-training exercise at nearby Camp Bullis, Texas.

"Our students learn how to carry out their job from the first step, which is setting up the case cart for the operation with a perioperative nurse," McArthur said.

Once the surgery begins, operating-room specialists must know how to set up a sterile field, pass instruments to a surgeon, apply dressings, take care of a specimen, and then tear-down the room and take equipment to central materiel service for sterilization. Specialists also learn to sterilize equipment in the CMS.

"The course is very challenging," said student Pvt. Tommy Chavez. "But I'm enjoying it. I've always been interested in the medical field."

Seeing red

The job is not for the feint of heart or weak-stomached, so new students are shown graphic pictures and video of surgeries so they can get a glimpse of what is to come.

"It's common for students to pass out, even out in the field," McArthur said. "Some people have a blood aversion and others just get nervous the first time they're in a surgical setting."

Phase Two is 10 weeks conducted in large Army medical centers or at small Army community hospitals where students apply their new knowledge and skills in a surgical setting, McArthur said.

Course leaders always keep an eye on the battlefield and work to interweave lessons learned in Iraq into the curriculum to ensure students are ready for any situation.

"Many of our instructors have deployed and share pictures and knowledge that we integrate with the classes," McArthur said.

The operating-room specialist role grows in intensity while deployed. The specialists may serve with a forward surgical team, assisting with life-sustaining surgeries, or a combat support hospital farther away from the front lines.

"You have to be able to keep a cool head, which is why realistic training, like we have here, is so important," McArthur said.

After training, students are equipped with the knowledge to assist with all types of operations, to include orthopedics, cardio-thoracic, neurosurgery, podiatry, vascular, ophthalmic and general surgery.

As they gain more experience, "they are given more responsibility such as patient transportation, setting up surgical suites, operating surgical equipment and helping to monitor blood loss," McArthur said.

Skills

Upon graduation, "68 Deltas are expected to demonstrate, under the direct supervision of a registered nurse, entry-level operating-room specialist skills in the operating room and central materiel service," she said.

While surgeons may garner the spotlight, the Army's operating-room specialists play a vital role in the supporting cast of a medical team.

From the May 2008 Mercury, an Army Medical Department publication.