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Surgical Tech Program: Brandy Wooten

Read about Brandy Wooten, a 2003 graduate of College of The Albemarle’s (COA) Surgical Tech program.

After Wooten earned her Surgical Tech program at College of The Albemarle (COA) in 2003, she soon found herself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with surgeons in the operating rooms at Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City, preparing for various surgical procedures and assisting during surgery.

Wooten, who also simultaneously earned an associate degree in general occupational technology from COA, enjoyed her work, although it wasn’t the career she originally envisioned for herself. She had spent two years at Pitt Community College in Greenville, North Carolina, where she tried to get into the school’s medical sonography program. Each year, Wooten said, that program only accepted eight students and the year she applied, she was tenth. It was time for a new plan. So, Wooten moved back home to Elizabeth City and enrolled in the Surgical Tech program at COA. “My mom is a surgical technologist and is also a graduate of COA’s program,” Wooten said.

Twelve years later, Wooten is not only an instructor in her alma mater’s Surgical Tech program, she’s also the program coordinator. She has worked as a full-time instructor in the program for five years. Although she thoroughly enjoyed her time in the operating room, Wooten said her role as instructor is even more fulfilling, but she came into her new career quite by accident.

“My boss in the operating room asked if I would mind precepting a student,” said Wooten, who by that time had more than several years assisting with vascular, orthopedic and neuro surgeries. All her experience in the operating room made her an effective instructor and she found that she enjoyed the work. “It was nice working with the students and sharing that knowledge,” Wooten said. She worked as a part-time instructor for two years while she continued to also work part time at Albemarle Hospital. She split her time between the two jobs but returned to full time in the operating room for two more years until she heard the Surgical Tech instructor at COA was retiring. That’s when she became a full-time instructor in the one-year program.

Each year, Wooten said, as she welcomes her new students to the Surgical Tech program, she hears the same thing. Students are convinced they will never learn the operating procedures that they are expected to perfect in 12 months. Scrubbing and gown and gloving, Wooten said, are just a few of the procedures that always intimidate these new students. “You see them advance and do things they struggled with at the start,” Wooten said. “You show them and demonstrate and you encourage them. Then you go from one extreme to the other.” By the year’s end, Wooten said her students have completed 120 first-scrub cases in the operating room, helping to deliver babies and assist with breast reconstruction surgeries and vascular procedures, to name a few. “They are working alongside the surgeon during the entire procedure,” Wooten said, adding that COA’s Surgical Tech program also prepared her for everyday life in the operating room. “The degree helped to widen my knowledge base of the operating room,” she said.

“I like working with the students and seeing the transition come about in them,” Wooten added. “It gives you pleasure in knowing you aided in that confidence and getting them where they need to be.”