Julia Steiny: Virtual 'OR' gives kids a glimpse of surgeon's job

With a camera's close-up capabilities, 200 high school students were able to look right into the incision made for a rotator-cuff surgery and observe a surgeon removing a bone spur with a surgical saw to repair a human body part.

"They were rough," murmured a group of Central Falls High students who'd assembled to talk to me. "It was way rough," others agreed.

Jaqueline Arteaga said, "We all thought using the saw was awful. It looked like it was so rough, like sawing a tree. And then it looked like they were soldering, and finally when they were sewing it up, it was like sewing a turkey."

I noticed that my long-term addiction to ER had not divested me of my own delusions that real surgeons were a tad more delicate with their patients. Oh no, we watched fingers get right in there, lubricated by plenty of blood, yank back flesh and root around the way you get stuff unstuck from the back of your teeth. We all had an impressive experience of what really happens behind the closed door of an operating room, inside a willing volunteer's cut-open shoulder.

Welcome to virtual job shadowing, where, thanks to interactive technologies, human physiology and biology classes from nine different high schools asked questions of the surgeon and the surgical staff right then and there, as the surgery proceeded.

Before the first incision, head surgeon Dr. Infantalino and orthopedic surgical nurse Patti Aschaffenberg spent about a half an hour talking the students through all the equipment and tools in the "OR," explaining what to expect. Then they performed the 40-minute procedure. After the wound was closed, students continued to ask questions, while observing post-op routines such as the scrupulous counting of the instruments, blades and so on.

Okay, so it's not Star Trek's holodeck, with a computer reality so real that kids could perform the virtual surgery themselves on computer-generated bodies, but it's got to be the next best thing.

The experience made a committed would-be health care professional out of Jetzabel Rosado. "That made me say definitely, Yes! I felt like it was intense. From the first cut to the last stitch, I was sitting there intense the whole time. It was real, so something could go wrong and it did! They cut a blood vessel, and there was a huge blood spurt and when they cut it, it shrank back into the muscle. They had to get it and cauterize it with an electric wand."

So the experience turned some students on and some off, but that's the point of "job shadows," to get a sense of what work looks intriguing and what jobs, seen up close, become definitely unappealing. Before high-tech communications technology, hospitals could let a only handful of students watch an operation from the theater up above, at a considerable distance from the actual incision. Nothing will ever quite beat being there in the flesh, but as an introduction and experience, this was, as Rosado says, intense.

About three years ago, Central Falls science teacher Jerry Aissis was in a technology class at Bryant, taught by Ken Cahill (now a state school-to-career director), who encouraged his adult students to get creative with the new high-tech toys. Even back then Aissis was thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if the doc and others could answer questions during a surgery. There are so many health-care jobs involved from the moment the person fills out the paperwork on. Wouldn't it be great to do video conferencing with all of them?"

Aissis knew the technology was in place because he'd contacted RINET, which provides Internet access to schools and libraries, who confirmed they'd be interested in video conferences for job shadowing.

That notion certainly fit the sentiments and job description of Ruth Ricciarelli, the director of workforce development for the Hospitals Association of Rhode Island. "We are a sexy industry!" The video conferencing idea had been on her mind when her husband, David, returned home from seeing the doctor one night and announced gravely that he needed rotator-cuff surgery.

"This is great!" Ricciarelli replied.

"What, are you crazy?!"

She was sorry he needed surgery, but she needed a volunteer surgical patient. He said yes immediately. She called Brian Wallin, Kent County Hospital's public relations person, who had it all set up within a couple of hours. The only obstacle was that the interactive capabilities of Kent's OR did not remotely meet the bandwidth needs of RINET, but Cox Communications stepped up to the plate and solved that problem.

In the end, a variety of agencies and companies wove together a model community partnership to make something happen for the kids.

Nine high schools participated: Cumberland, Central Falls, North Providence, Warwick Veterans, West Warwick, North Kingstown, and three small Providence schools, the Health Sciences Academy, Feinstein, and Alternative Learning Project.

By way of explaining the need for the surgery, pre-operation, David Ricciarelli provided the students with a video showing him in the midst of his normal daily activities as the director of training at the Rhode Island Police Academy. He'd been an athlete in his youth, and in the video the students could see him getting handcuffed for training purposes for probably the bazillionth time, so they could see the wear and tear on his shoulder.

At 8 a.m., March 21, the health sciences job shadowers sat in conference rooms set up for the purpose. Brian Wallin, a TV reporter in a previous life, moderated the discussion from inside the OR, taking questions from each high school in turn. The students were rapt from beginning to end.

RINET is currently editing the footage, integrating bits from the police training video with student reactions and questions into footage of the surgery itself. The result won't have the fun of taking place in real time but will provide a memorable introduction to the health-care field.

More industries, I hope, will step up to the plate and show us what they do, using such interactive technology.

"I learned one thing for sure," says Natalia Santiago. "I'm never going to have surgery. I'm interested in mental health, but you can have the physical body!"

Okay, shrinks, it's your turn.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch, Education and Employment, Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.