Surgical Tech
Kassandra Kaiser, ST-C > Miami Valley Hospital
By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be
Kassandra Kaiser said that her friends were dubious when she told them that she was going to become a surgical technologist.
“They said, ‘You get kind of queasy.’ That is true,” she said with a laugh. “When my daughter had her tonsils and adenoids out, the doctor was telling me in the recovery room what he did and I had to sit down. I was passing out.”
Kaiser now works at Miami Valley Hospital assisting on all types of surgeries — although she is assigned to the neurosurgery team.
“As a student I thought, ‘I have to get through this.’ I would eat a good breakfast and go in there and not pass out. I discovered that, if I was actually doing something, it was fine and it was exciting.”
She arrived on the medical scene after a somewhat circuitous route. She graduated from Miami University with a degree in English education but decided she really didn’t like teaching.
“It’s a great field as long as you don’t mind grading papers all night,” she said. After a divorce, she worked in the insurance industry for a while.
“I started dating somebody who had sisters who were nurses and he said, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a nurse?’ I said that I had always wanted to do that so I started in nursing (classes),” she said.
“In one of your initial classes, you have to learn about all the other jobs in health care. I didn’t even know what a (surgical technologist) was but I was reading through this and I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
She graduated from Sinclair Community College with an associate degree in Allied Health. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in health administration from Central Michigan University.
Surgical technologists — commonly called scrub techs — have the choice of being noncertified or certified by passing an exam.
“Certification earns you a little bit more money and it allows you to travel to any state (to take a job),” Kaiser said.
“Our primary job is setting up the equipment, opening the instruments, setting up the table and assisting the surgeons — your whole purpose is to assist that surgeon,” she explained. “I get here about 6:45 a.m., check my cart to make sure all my instruments are there,” she said.
After scrubbing and putting on gown and gloves, she returns to the OR. “I open all my instruments. For a big case (such as a lumbar fusion), it takes about 30 minutes to get set up.
“By this time the patient is coming into the room. When they make the incision, I have to know what the doctor is going to need. My job is to be three steps ahead and have it ready for him,” she said. “There are a couple of hundred doctors who work here and we are expected to know every (surgery) specialty. In training we go through a rotation and go through everything from open-heart to bellies to backs — everything. I was a big note taker (on what surgeons want). When you get to your job, you are on a team — a neuro team, an ortho team, a heart team — so I primarily work with the same surgeons.
“I love my job. I go home at the end of the day feeling as if I have helped people,” she said.
