There are many different duties and tasks that surgical technologist must take care of on a daily basis and most of these will be done inside of a brightly lit, very cool and quiet work environment of an operating room. While knowledge definitely goes a long way and is a requirement to be successful in this field of work, there are many skills and obstacles that an individual must be willing to acquire and hurdle over to be a great surgical technician. There are going to be instances in the operating room where patients will not make it through the entire operation or something goes wrong and there is simply no way to reverse the end result. A surgical technician must have an iron heart to remain emotionally stable as well as a rock hard stomach so that they can handle all of the gruesome images that they must endure while helping with a procedure. The duties of this profession themselves are not what make being a surgical tech challenging, it is the hardship or having to be in the operating room, taking in all of the pressure and still needing to work at an extremely high level of concentration without making any mistakes.

In terms of their duties, they are split up into three different categories that are considered phases. These are called preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative case management and they happen consecutively, after the last phase is finished the first one starts up again. The first one, just like the name suggests, take place before the operation does and the duties that are completed in this timeframe consist of gathering all of the necessary instruments and tools for the operation, counting them out and helping out the assisting surgical team into the sterile field. The second stage happens while the operating is occurring and at this point a surgical tech is responsible for being the right-hand man of the surgeon in handing them any instruments or tools that they need, handling any specimens, preparing medication and assisting with dressings to patients. Lastly, the last phase is where everything is wrapped up including removing any used instruments, caring for and maintaining any and all equipment and tools that were used during the procedure, keeping the area sterile until the patient is escorted out as well as preparing the room for the next scheduled operation. All in all, while the duties of this profession are always going to be quite stressful and challenging, the surgical technologist salary rewarded at the end of the day will be more than worth the effort.