Keep the Sterile, Sterile.

As a surgical tech, your main goal in surgery is to create and maintain a sterile field. 

Sterile means the absence of bacteria. My teacher often says we are fighting an invisible enemy. It sure feels like it a lot of times. The rules of sterility are very very strict. And really annoying when somebody contaminates you or your field.

Being sterile is a very unique feeling. I love the feeling of scrubbing my hands and putting on my gown and gloves and working in a sterile field. But also, every time I start scrubbing my hands, I swear everything starts itching.

But before you get to scrub in you have to open up your back table. This means literally throwing things out of packages and hoping they land onto your sterile back table. I had no idea what any of this was when I started school. I was surprised at first but now it seems normal. When I first opened up a back table by myself I dropped everything. Everything. It is one of those very unique skills that is only useful in the operating room. Unless you are wanting to impress someone by opening a string cheese package without touching the cheese.

This is an example of what a sterile back table looks like. It is pretty great right? Lot's of blue and green.

Another thing my teacher always reminds us of is to have a surgical conscious. When you contaminate something, you have enough integrity to correct it. Even if nobody else is watching and you know you contaminated. Even though that may be extra work for you or delay the surgery by a little bit, it is important to maintain sterility.

Infections come because there was a break in sterile technique. Sometimes it happens just because we are human and make mistakes and don't notice. The other times we make mistakes because we are human and we do notice but don't correct it.

Whenever I make a mistake and I realize it I always correct it. I act as though every procedure I am setting up for a surgery on my mom. And I will have the best sterile technique out there so she has the best outcome for recovery. Because there were several surgical techs that assisted on my mom's surgeries and I thank them for their surgical conscience when my mom was on the table.