SAN ANTONIO – Local high school students got some unique hands-on experience Thursday at Westover Hills Baptist Hospital.
Health science students from Brennan High School got to test out a $5 million surgical robotics system: da Vinci 5.
“My heart was beating fast, out of excitement mostly,” student Elia Lukose said. “It felt very exhilarating. I loved it”.
Lukose is a junior at Brennan High School, aspiring to become an orthopedic nurse practitioner. She was the first student to take the controls of the da Vinci 5.
The da Vinci 5 is the latest model of the system being used every day at the hospital, allowing surgeons to go into the body without having to make huge or major incisions.
Instead of the surgeon’s hands, specially designed instruments attached to slender robotic arms enter the body through smaller incisions.
Dr. Michael Keller, Baptist Health System’s colorectal surgeon, said technology like the da Vinci 5 will be the standard in training for new surgeons across the board.
Keller believes students interested in health care should be introduced to the new technology and the industry sooner rather than later.
“You can romanticize what you want to do,” Keller said, “but until you actually get to see it, the good and the bad, that’s when you truly realize that’s what your calling is.”
Brennan science teacher Schillen Goodlin, who accompanied students to the hospital demonstration, agreed with Keller.
“This gives them exposure to come out, see what it actually looks like in real time and see what, you know, what the world’s gonna look like when they get out of high school,” Goodlin said.
Thursday’s event was held in hopes of inspiring and encouraging the students to become surgeons, Goodlin and hospital officials said, but it also highlighted other specializations needed in the medical field, such as programmers and engineers.
“The truth is, the surgeon is at the very end of the process,” Keller said. “There are millions and millions of codes that are written to work the robot.”
“I can only imagine how many engineers it must take to have created or maintain the robotics itself,” Kellar continued.
Both said the everyday interaction with technology like AI, combined with opportunities to see the different types of applications of technology up close in medicine and other fields, can help students find a path to success in life.
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