427 - The Surgical Need - 50 Years of Surgical Technology

a critical time in the history of surgery and even more so, the fate of our country. As the operating room has grown, so has the definition of not only who but what the surgical technologist has become. During the World Wars, the role of the “scrub” began in the battlefield hospitals and Navy ships that defended our free- dom. “In World War I and World War II, the U.S. Army used ‘medics’ to work under the direct supervision of the surgeon. Concurrently, medical ‘corpsman’ were used in the United States Navy aboard combat ships. Nurses were not allowed aboard combat ships at the time. This led to a new profes- sion within the military called operating room technicians (ORTs).” 2 It was the trials of war that set the ground work to give surgical technology its start. It was a gritty, daring risk to continue the surgical needs of a nation. In 1969, the Association of Surgical Technologists was established by members of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the Association of peri-Operative Registered Nurses (AORN). 1 This critical and longstand- ing establishment was the foundation that carried the torch and was a dar- ing breakaway from the shadows of the profession’s nursing counterparts. The surgical way of doing things has always been to ask the difficult questions and be just curious enough to try. Such can be said as the need for improvement in organ transplant increased and in 1975, a milestone set, the first laparoscopic -assisted organ transplant took place. It was a surgical need sought after to prove that shorter incisions and the creation of minimally invasive surgery even though intricate in nature were beneficial when considering the long- term outcome for the patient. From the beginning of 1980 to the end of the 1990s, the operating room shed its “old-school” mentality and took a step into the technological age. Computers and the thought of EMR or Electronic Medical Records began to make paper records a thing of the past. Incisions became smaller as new skills in minimally invasive procedures became the new standard. A line in the sand was beginning to appear between staff that believed in tried and true methods of old and the doctors, nurses and surgical technologists that knew that innovative treatments and procedures were a daring new chapter. As well, surgery became recognized as not only a need but sometimes as a want. In proving this point, Business Insider 5 when refer- ring to the evolution of the last 100 years of surgery states that “With minimally-invasive techniques on the rise, surgery entered the mainstream. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a booming interest in plastic surgery, as people realized opera- tions could be a form of recreation, not just life-preservation. Breast implants among other body enhancements such as the rise of total joint procedures suddenly made surgery a profit- able industry. Instrumentation began to change its appearance from the archaic and sometimes barbaric tools you’d find in dungeons to more delicate and even more microscopic tools meant to advance patient care. Even though theatre-style operating rooms were a thing | The Surgical Technologist | JULY 2019 302 1990 - Antibiotic Irrigation Laparotomy