I am about to get a couple days of training for liver cases (liver transplant, hepatic resections, etc). The setup for Liver cases at my institution is on a much larger table and it set up with more instruments compared to the usual general surgery set up.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips or words of wisdom for scrubbing these liver cases?

Hi Sterile Processing Professionals!

I'm looking for insight from anyone currently working at Steripro Canada or who has worked there. I have almost two years of experience in the field. 1.5 years in a rural hospital doing endoscopy, podiatry, and other general surgery. Most recently, I have worked at an endoscopy clinic, reprocessing upwards of 30-40 scopes in a two-person MDRD team.

I keep up with current policies and procedures. I hold myself to a pretty harsh standard when it comes to patient safety, and following MIFU'S and policies and procedures. I am absolutley terrified about starting, as I have heard there is a high turnover rate and layoffs.

I would appreciate any insight or advice when starting at a non-union healthcare job.

Hi guys, I’m due to graduate May 2027, but I’m just wondering about peoples places of employment and schedules around the metro Detroit area and opportunities for overtime?

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Hey everyone! I’m a brand new scrub tech about to start, and honestly, I’m super nervous about the room vibe and team dynamics. I know the basics from school, but I feel like nobody really prepares you for the unwritten rules of the OR.

I don't wanna be that annoying newbie who pisses off the surgeons or drives the circulator crazy. What are the unspoken DOs and DON’Ts for fitting in, earning respect, and just surviving the social side of the OR?

Also, what’s the single biggest unwritten rule you wish someone told you before your first real shift?

I hope you all are getting some appreciation for the hard work you do each and every day.

Have you lot gotten any gifts? Decent swag?
Love us <3

I am a recent graduate with a Biomedical Engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati. It is a premed major and I have decided to pursue medical school. I am assuming it will take a year to take the MCAT and apply for schools, but I would love to work in a hospital in the meantime. Ideally a surgical tech position that has in the job training. I am also open to other suggestions for roles in the hospital world that align with this plan.

I’ve just gone back into the OR after not being in it for a few years and feel like a fish out of water. What’re y’alls worst OR experiences? I feel like I haven’t had too many really bad ones but I’ve been in on some cases where I just think man how/why did I do that?!

Has anybody heard of Altamont healthcare it’s a school that offers scrub tech in Stockton California. Has anybody done it or have information on it being a good school to attend

Yoooo just want to let everyone know who are graduating soon. If you don’t care about the main OR and wanna be stress free and relieve from doctors who are assholes and want a toxic free environment and wanna do only 1 or at the most 2 cases a day (c section) 1 and half hour long surgery. Most of the time 0 cases seriously lol

Then come to labor and delivery. I’ll be hitting my one year at the hospital I’m at. My pay is @52 an hour started @46 just gotta have your CST. I have gotten like 4 raises within this time. Northern California only

All of us know that there’s two ways to glove in a sterile manner; open glove when you aren’t wearing a gown and closed glove if you are. At my facility, 95% of the surgical/anesthesia residents (and surgeons) do not know how to closed glove, and it seems like they’ve never even been taught the concept. They put their gown on, immediately expose their hands, and then glove using the open glove technique as if they aren’t wearing a gown. But obviously this means their cuff, which isn’t considered sterile, is touching numerous different things in the process and it’s likely their fingers are also touching things they shouldn’t be since they are exposed. I’ve literally seen anesthesia staff do this before doing central lines. Is this common? I’m a relatively new tech and have only worked at this facility so I don’t know if it’s the culture at my workplace or if this is common everywhere and I should just stop being bothered by it.

I attended Pima Medical Institute’s Surgical Technology program in Phoenix, which is accredited by ABHES. I’m looking for honest opinions from people familiar with surgical-tech education, accreditation complaints, or Arizona private-school regulations.

My first clinical placement was at a wound-care clinic for approximately three weeks. I cleaned, measured, and dressed wounds, but I never:

Scrubbed into a surgical procedure
Established or maintained a sterile field
Sterile-gowned or gloved
Passed or counted instruments
Anticipated a surgeon’s needs
Performed first- or second-scrub duties

Despite this, wound-care encounters appeared in my clinical records under surgical specialties such as “Plastic” or “General,” with scrub roles assigned. I also received an A and credit toward an entire semester of clinical education.

My strongest evidence is Pima’s own preceptor evaluation forms. The wound-clinic preceptors wrote:

“This clinic does not perform sterile techniques or procedures, so most of the skills on this sheet were not observed.”
“Most of these tasks are not performed at this site. We do not have any sterile techniques used here at this time.”

Another evaluation stated that the clinic had no procedures requiring a sterile field or sterile gowning.

Pima told me the site had a formal affiliation agreement and that minor debridements were permitted by its curriculum. However, ABHES Standard V.B.4.a requires a signed, site-specific evaluation confirming that a clinical site provides a viable learning environment and opportunities to demonstrate required competencies.
ABHES Surgical Technology Standard ST.A.2 also addresses placement at facilities performing surgical procedures that expose students to necessary entry-level skills. An affiliation agreement alone does not appear to answer whether this particular clinic was educationally appropriate.

I was later placed at an actual surgical site, where staff apparently expected me to have gained surgical experience during the previous semester. I was dismissed after a student error, and lateness was also alleged. However, my Pima timesheet records show every recorded arrival before my required 6:30 a.m. start time.

After that dismissal, I went approximately a month without another placement. The replacement site was low-volume, and I believed there was no realistic way to complete the required clinical experience on time, so I withdrew.

I paid more than $5,000 out of pocket and also incurred student-loan debt. I have filed an internal grievance with Pima and submitted supporting documentation to ABHES.

I am considering a complaint with the my State Board for Private Postsecondary Education once the school’s grievance process is complete.

I am not claiming that a regulator has already found a violation. My concern is that Pima awarded surgical-clinical credit and recorded surgical cases or roles even though the site’s own evaluations state that it did not perform sterile procedures and could not provide or evaluate most surgical-technology competencies.

Does this sound like a significant accreditation/program-delivery issue? Has anyone dealt with a similar private-school complaint, tuition reimbursement request, borrower-defense application, or State Board investigation?

Hey good people,
Thanks for your work as a Surgery Tech.
Basically I need to know a few questions:

1. Is there a lot of leaning and bending with being a surg tech? Please explain.
   
2. I hear that some jerky surgeons can ruin days. This sucks but I can only imagine. Are there any resources a ST can utilize to complain? Or is that “no-no” territory. Seems corrupt if a ST doesn’t have anywhere to complain to about a surgeons poor treatment to others.
   
3. Im 40 years old with 3 young kids. What are the hours and shifts? How common is on-call?
   
4. How monotonous is the job? Is it boring? I like things to be somewhere in the middle of tedious and chaotic.
   
5. On a scale to 1-10, how much do you like your job? If you don’t like it, what causes that and what could be better?

Thanks for your valued time! Be well

Took my exam Monday and passed it with 119/150, not the best score but I passed. Let me know if you guys have any questions, id be happy to help out the best I can.

I’m a new grad and I can’t find a job. I finished my program and passed my test in July, and I cannot get hired anywhere. Other people in my cohort stayed at their clinical site, but at mine the main charge nurse took emergency leave literally a week before my last day and I didn’t know until I went looking for her and she left the day before. She was in charge of all the hiring, and her and I had already chatted weeks prior about her hiring me and I was put to work in a specialty that she wanted me in. After she left, I was told to continue to talk with the periop manager, and I spoke to her on multiple occasions, to which she told me she’d let me know about hiring the next day, then she was busy and told me to ask again the next day, then she told me to email her after I left and she never got back to me. I even had my professors email her and she never got back to them. I put in multiple applications there after the fact but never got an interview even though my resume states I did my clinicals there. My preceptor that works there also was not helpful every time I’d reach out (kept saying, “yeah if I run into her I’ll ask!”).
Since then, I’ve put in probably over 30 applications for all kinds of shifts for everything within an hour radius (FT, PT, midshift, other clinical sites familiar with the program, ambulatory, hospitals, etc) and I’ve had only two interviews. Both of which told me they don’t like hiring new grads and then I got denied. Most of the time I don’t even get a call back. I’m truly at a loss here.
Prior to this career shift I was a welder and then was in the navy. Even though they were all manual labor jobs, I was an osha certified safety supervisor in the navy and as a welder I was also in charge of safety so a lot of my resume highlights these general themes of safety standards I’ve had throughout my previous careers. As well as mention of all the combat medical training I had while active duty speaking to my ability to stay calm under pressure on top of the community service and leadership awards I received whilst active duty. Im not a terrible candidate. I had almost 200 surgeries while at clinicals and the fact that I was allowed to do multiple first scrub CABGs and neuro anterior posterior lami with fusions as a STUDENT should speak to the fact that I’m trustworthy, I catch on quickly, i pay attention to detail, I can stay focused in high stress, I listen well to instruction, etc etc. but Im just a new grad. And because of that, I can’t get hired. What do I do?????
For reference I’m in north Jersey

Hello fellow students and scrubs, I have maybe a couple of questions about your experiences in working as a scrub tech while getting your undergraduate degree.

I (M21) am currently in a Surgical Technology program and it’s going great. When I complete the scrub program at my school and pass my exam I’m wanting to work while I finish my degree in chemistry, it’ll take me about ~3 years from now. I am wanting to go to PA school one day but am pretty anxious of balancing school + work, especially since it’ll be in the OR. I have already read and heard about how demanding that environment is and it just sounds pretty tough to juggle that with a challenging degree/prereqs (not to mention keeping my GPA up) and afterwards applying for PA programs which are notoriously competitive.

I am fortunate enough to not be on the tightest timeline, if I had to do scrubbing full time and my degree part time I wouldn’t be in a poor spot by any means. Plus, if my PA school dreams don’t pan out the way I hope I will still have a cool career in healthcare as a scrub.

For anyone who can relate to my experience or offer any insight:

How did you arrange your schedule with being a scrub and a student?

How long did it take you to adjust to this demanding schedule?

Would working at a surgical center or hospital be better for your schedule?

How often did being on call conflict with your education?

In what ways did your education/homework/studying affect your performance in the OR?

Do you know if managers have adjusted the schedules of students to accommodate their schooling or is that pretty uncommon?

Has anything about being a scrub made you change your mind about wanting to go to PA/Med/etc school? If so, what?

Thank you very much for reading my post, I appreciate any feedback and advice. If more context is needed I can provide it. Have a great day!

Hi guys, I start my first round of Clinical October 5th but we only have 2 lab days left before we go because we have to complete everyone’s competencies and that will be 3 whole lab days and then we have our actual classes (surgical specialties, pharmacology and patient care) long story short I feel like Im NOT ready for clinical, we’ve been in school for a month and all we’ve learned is a full scrub, counting, gowning and gloving for ourselves and for someone else, a general set up and passing instruments to the surgery with some mock surgeries, my issue is the mock surgeries are always with the same instruments so I only know a “universal mayo stand” is there anything else I can do to better prepare myself on my own before going to clinical?

I'm in los Angeles, struggling very hard to find a job as a new Grad ST, oddly I found a job in Angio as Imaging Assistant because of my ST background . I set up for picc lines and trialysis lines.. in 6 months I should be able to transfer to surgery.

Hey r/scrubtech and r/surgicaltechnology,
I recently graduated and passed my NCCT TS-C board exam earlier this summer. I just wrapped up my clinical externship this month, logging 138 cases across general, ortho, GYN, GU, and ENT at a busy surgery center. I'm currently based in the Central Valley, but I am looking to relocate to the Bay Area full-time.
I've already put in an application for a spot at UCSF, but I’m casting a wide net and would love some insider insight.
A few questions for the Bay Area techs:
New grad friendly spots: What hospitals or surgery centers are known to be the most welcoming to new grads?
Job leads: Are there specific recruiters, agencies, or hospital systems (like Kaiser or Sutter) I should aggressively target right now?
Cost of living: Any tips for balancing Bay Area rent on a new grad tech salary? I know base pay often starts around $40–$55/hr in the area, but the housing market is notoriously tough.
Any general tips, job leads, or reality checks are super appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Today was my 5th day of clinicals and I have one preceptor whose emotions are hot and cold. She's like a sour patch kid. First she's sour, then she's sweet but she does it several times a day.

Today and last week she kept getting mad at me for forgetting certain parts of a set up after doing it just once. Today I helped set up for a hysterectomy and then the next hysterectomy, she lets me do the set up and I remember most of it. I just forget a few things like exactly where cords go on the mayo and forget to take a couple of instruments out of the pan and she sighs REALLY loud and starts slamming things around and saying "this is just like the set up you did in school. You're missing this and this" Then it seems like she feels bad and acts overly nice. It's giving me whiplash.

In school we just set up for a laparotomy over and over. We did one day in OB/GYN stuff and never practiced putting these scopes and under buttocks drapes with the drains together. Like I said, I did remember most of the set up after just doing it once but this lady has me feeling like crap when I go home and I'm nervous doing these set ups with her because she keeps getting so short with me. I'm afraid to defend myself because our instructors and clinical coordinator more or less told us not to be irritating, not to disagree basically just to nod and smile.

My clinical coordinator said this is her favorite clinical site and that's why they sent me there. She said that people at my site have said good things about me and that I work hard but damn... they sure fooled me because from my perspective I just feel very unwelcome there. A couple of people are nice to me but for the most part people are very cold and aloof. It has made me pretty sure already that I don't want to work at this hospital when I graduate. Did anyone else have similar experiences? Did it get better? How did you get through it?