Daniel LeBlanc is a sterile processing technician. He recently became a supervisor.
LeBlanc got his first job in the hospital in the housekeeping department. "I was moving furniture and stuff and then I got some courses -- medical terminology and a central service tech training course," he says.
With those courses and a strong interest in medicine, he got a job as a sterile processing technician. He says it's hard work, but he loves it.
"Absolutely. It's totally interesting. I really like the job," he says. "Every day, it's different. Every day, there's something new."
He says that the sterile processing department's main job is to make sure that everything is available for an operation to proceed safely. They contribute to the safety of operations by providing sterilized instruments and linens.
Although he doesn't usually work with the public, LeBlanc says that he enjoys being in the background of an industry with a mandate of helping the public.
"It's a public service, basically," he says. "It's patient-oriented. Patients come into the hospital, of course, and they go for the surgery. They don't really know too much about our department.
"It's a huge service we're providing, and a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of the public don't realize it, but without us, the operating room couldn't function."
LeBlanc says that he likes working in an environment where he can get some extra education. The hospital pays the course fees for some classes, such as anatomy and biology.
"We're big on education here at the hospital," he says. "You're given every and any opportunity to educate yourself. [Education] gets you into the guts of the department, of different areas -- microbiology and stockroom control -- and it gets you into detail about that stuff.
"I'm interested in the anatomy and microbiology and stuff like that," he says. "I'm a medical first responder and I'm a volunteer firefighter, so anything medical really interests me."
Helen Vandoremalen also happened into the sterile processing department somewhat by chance. She is the manager of the processing center at a women's health center.
She was trained as a registered nurse and worked mainly in the operating room until she was brought into sterile processing as an educator.
Vandoremalen says that to understand the problems that the operating room has with surgical instruments, it's essential to have some operating room experience. That experience, in turn, makes a sterile technician more clearly see their role in the overall health process.
"Even though it's not direct patient care, I think it's indirect patient care, in the fact that you are delivering a quality product. Having worked in the O.R., I know it wasn't so before. The sets as we got them were not quality products. We've developed processes to ensure that the items are sterile."
She trains her employees to work using their smarts and gives them the opportunity to go to the operating room and see live operations.
The supervisor's role in the sterile processing department involves organizing the crew as well as spending time, when necessary, working as a technician.
Sandra Galeski is an operating room materials coordinator. She says she is content as a manager, but for her there isn't much room to grow in the sterile processing department. Would she recommend the field to others?
"Probably not," Galeski says, "because it's not a lucrative field. If you have a student coming out of high school who doesn't really have the desire to go to college for four years, but yet doesn't really want to work at McDonald's, maybe I would suggest it."
Galeski came into the sterile processing department after spending 17 years working as an operating room technician.
"I would suggest for [students] to go to O.R. tech school, not sterile tech school, because you can do a lot more with O.R. tech school. Depending on how much experience you have and knowledge that you have, you could go a lot farther as an O.R. technician."
Dennis Stephenson, however, finds the work very gratifying. He says that a good knowledge of all the tools in the sterile processing department can open up doors in other areas.
"Let's say you started off as a sterile processing technician and you learn the instrumentation very well," Stephenson says. "You can work your way up to becoming a scrub technician, and that's actually participation in the surgical procedures, which would lead to more money and so on and so on."