>> So it's a lot of classroom and a lot of lab time in your first year especially.
The second semester of your first year, you do clinical rotation one day a week
at a surgery facility, whether it be a hospital -- usually, it's a hospital.
Sometimes it's a surgery center.
And you initially start out just observing.
And then, you start to scrub cases and work sort of in a secondary scrub or tech role
where you're kind of assisting the tech, you know.
And then, as you gain confidence in yourself and they, if the facility gain confidence
in you too, they'll have you step up into the lead role and actually tech.
Then, in the second year, it's some classroom and some lab, but it is three days a week
of clinical, six to eight hours a day, depending on your clinical site
or where you are within the program.
And you actually are the lead tech, and you work as if you are an employee of that facility.
Well, first of all, you need to be okay with the human anatomy as far as the internal organs
and blood, but you also have to be punctual and a little bit OCD in some ways, where, you know,
because the way the scrub goes and the way sort of things have to happen,
if you're not OCD in those areas, then it's easy for things to sort of fall through the cracks
as far as not using the proper aseptic or sterile technique,
which can cause an infection for the patient.
Or, in some cases, it can cause bodily harm to yourself
by passing an instrument wrong or receiving the instrument.
And so at WCTC, they require that towards the end of our second year,
we actually take the natural certification exam to become a certified surgical technologist,
which that means you just have a little bit better understanding of the aseptic technique,
sterile technique, some of the other things that go on within, like, central processing,
where they actually sterilize the instrumentation, and things of that nature.
But then, the benefit of becoming a certified surgical technologist is that it allows you
to work anywhere in the United States that you choose.
You know, the end of the program, you basically have to have a college education or diploma,
and there's certain minimum general education requirements from science, and English,
and things of that nature that you have to have to be able to petition for the program.