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At 7 a.m., KU surgical technologist Angela Abel puts on her light blue shoe coverings and hairnet to make sure she is sterile from outside debris. She enters the operating room and turns on the buzzing fluorescent lights, seeing a clean operating table and cabinets filled with tools. Abel glances at the doctor’s preference cards and begins setting out scalpels, scissors and sutures. She is now ready for her first procedure.

At the same time, operating room liaison Aline Thomas comes to work and supervises the sterilization of medical tools by using a checklist to make sure all of the equipment is going to the correct sterilization room for more cleaning. Thomas coordinates with each operating room and the Sterile Processing Department to make sure that each room has the necessary surgical instruments as fast as possible.

Both Abel and Thomas work at KU hospital on Rainbow Blvd, approximately ten minutes from STA. There, patients and their families only see the doctors at work. Little do they know that multiple people are at work behind the scenes to make sure their operation runs smoothly. For Abel and Thomas, their jobs are essential to the surgical process by making sure everything is prepared and sterile, ready for an operation.

“If the sterility of the instruments wasn’t insured, then the patient would be at great risk for infection,” Thomas said. “With the increasing amount of surgeries it is necessary to have someone to communicate between the operating rooms and the [Sterile Processing Department] to ensure accurate and timely disbursement of instrumentation.”

According to Thomas, it is her job to make sure the operation runs smoothly and the patient remains healthy.

“If something is broken, then it needs to be replaced,” Thomas said. “If things do not get sterilized properly, then it is dangerous to the patient who may get a severe infection.”

According to orthopedic surgeon Dr. Greg Horton, people do not usually affiliate these jobs with surgery.

“People normally associate doctors and nurses with operations, but rarely do they think about the other support staff, such as people who prepare the rooms and run for blood,” Horton said.

Thomas said that sterilization is necessary to assure the equipment used on the patient is free of any biological contaminants, like bacteria, that could infect the patient. Because of this, she feels her job is not often recognized because few people understand what is takes to make the equipment and instruments safe for a patient.

‘I feel a lot of people do not know my job even exists, or they think all I do is hand a scalpel to the surgeon because that is all people see on television,’ Thomas said.

Abel agrees and says she feels that her job is vital to the process despite outsiders’ common misunderstandings.

‘It definitely takes a person with excellent sterile technique and good knowledge of instrumentation and the surgeries that they are working on,” Abel said. “The surgical tech can make a case go very quickly or take longer than necessary.’

According to Horton, a surgical technician can make or break a surgery. Sometimes the tech will drop the equipment on the ground and in the world of medicine, there is no five-second rule: it must be sterilized once again.

Without one of the team members, the operation would not go as smoothly. According to Horton, the people in the background are necessary to anything that occurs in the operation.

‘[Surgery] would simply not be possible [without background workers],’ Horton said. ‘It truly takes a village.’