Course Description
Fundamentals of Surgical Technology introduces the discipline and the surgical technologist's role in preventing perioperative disease transmission. It introduces microbiology — the characteristics and activities of microorganisms, a survey of the major microbial groups with emphasis on pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and the significant aspects of human infectious disease — and then applies that foundation to practice: the principles of perioperative care, asepsis and infection control, and the proper disinfection, assembly, and sterilization of instrumentation.
Within the SCNS taxonomy, STS is the Surgical Technology prefix. STS1303 sits early in the professional core, after the introductory course — Daytona State requires STS1302 — and it is the prerequisite for STS1308 Perioperative Patient Care Concepts, which this repository also carries. Daytona State publishes it at 3 credits, offered in fall. It appears at approximately four Florida institutions.
The pairing of microbiology with sterile technique is the pedagogical point. Aseptic practice taught as a set of rules produces technologists who follow them until they are inconvenient. Taught as the consequence of how microorganisms actually behave, it produces technologists who understand why a sterile field is compromised by a reach across it — and those are the ones who speak up.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Describe the surgical technologist's role and the structure of the surgical team.
- Describe the characteristics, structure, and activities of microorganisms.
- Survey the major microbial groups — bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and prions — with emphasis on pathogenic forms.
- Explain the chain of infection and identify the point at which each control interrupts it.
- Describe the significant human infectious diseases relevant to the surgical environment.
- Describe surgical site infection: risk factors, classification, and prevention.
- Describe bloodborne pathogens and apply standard precautions.
- Distinguish medical asepsis from surgical asepsis and apply each appropriately.
- State and apply the principles of sterile technique.
- Perform surgical hand antisepsis, gowning, and gloving, including closed gloving.
- Create and maintain a sterile field, and recognize and correct a break in technique.
- Describe methods of decontamination, cleaning, and disinfection, and select appropriately by instrument and use.
- Inspect, assemble, and package instrumentation correctly for sterilization.
- Describe the methods of sterilization — steam, ethylene oxide, hydrogen peroxide, and others — and their indications and limitations.
- Apply sterilization monitoring: mechanical, chemical, and biological indicators, and interpret the results.
- Describe event-related sterility, storage, and handling of sterile supplies.
- Describe environmental controls in the operating room: air handling, traffic patterns, and attire.
- Apply principles of perioperative care within the surgical technologist's scope.
Optional Outcomes
- Describe antimicrobial resistance and multidrug-resistant organisms.
- Describe surgical antibiotic prophylaxis and its timing.
- Describe sterile processing department workflow and central service certification.
- Describe infection prevention surveillance and reporting.
- Describe emerging infectious disease and outbreak response in surgical settings.
- Describe the handling of loaner and implant instrumentation.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- The surgical technology profession and the surgical team
- Microbiology fundamentals: cell structure, growth, and metabolism
- Bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and prions
- Pathogenicity, virulence, and host defenses
- The chain of infection and its interruption
- Human infectious disease relevant to surgery
- Surgical site infection: risk, classification, and prevention
- Bloodborne pathogens and standard precautions
- Medical asepsis versus surgical asepsis
- Principles of sterile technique
- Surgical hand antisepsis, gowning, and gloving
- Creating and maintaining the sterile field
- Decontamination, cleaning, and disinfection levels
- Instrument inspection, assembly, and packaging
- Sterilization methods and their applications
- Sterilization monitoring and biological indicators
- Event-related sterility, storage, and handling
- Operating room environment: air, traffic, and attire
- Introduction to perioperative care
Optional Topics
- Antimicrobial resistance and MDROs
- Surgical antibiotic prophylaxis
- Sterile processing workflow and certification
- Infection surveillance and reporting
- Emerging infectious disease and outbreak response
- Loaner instrumentation and implants
Resources & Tools
- Surgical Technology for the Surgical Technologist: A Positive Care Approach (AST) — the association's own text and the closest match to this course.
- Surgical Technology: Principles and Practice (Fuller) — the other standard adoption.
- AORN Guidelines for Perioperative Practice — the operative standard of care for sterile technique, sterilization, attire, and environmental controls. This is what a facility is measured against, and the course content derives from it.
- AAMI standards — the technical authority for sterilization and sterile processing, including ST79 for steam sterilization.
- CDC — the Guideline for Prevention of Surgical Site Infection and the sterilization and disinfection guideline, both free and authoritative.
- OSHA Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030).
- Laboratory equipment: sterile gowns, gloves, drapes, back tables, instrument sets, sterilizers, packaging materials, and indicators.
- NBSTSA (nbstsa.org) — CST examination content outline; ARC/STSA for program accreditation status.
Career Pathways
- Certified Surgical Technologist (CST) in hospital operating rooms — the primary destination.
- Ambulatory surgery center technologist — a large and growing Florida sector with more predictable hours.
- Sterile processing technician and central service management — the specialization that grows most directly out of this course, with its own certifications (CRCST and above) and a genuine career ladder.
- Specialty scrub — orthopedics, cardiovascular, neurosurgery, robotics; specialization raises pay meaningfully.
- Surgical first assistant — with additional education and the CSFA credential.
- Infection prevention support — with further training, a path into a hospital infection prevention department.
- Medical device sales and clinical specialist roles — device companies recruit experienced scrubs specifically.
- Florida employers include AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, HCA Florida, Baptist Health, Tampa General, and an unusually large ambulatory surgery center sector. SOC code 29-2055 Surgical Technologists.
Special Information
⚠ Sterilization failure is a patient-harm event, and the monitoring exists because it happens
The most consequential content in the course. A sterilization failure means potentially contaminated instruments were used on patients, and the consequences are serious and institutional: patient notification, infection risk, regulatory reporting, and litigation. Facilities have had to recall and notify hundreds of patients over documented failures.
The monitoring system exists precisely because failures are not visible on inspection:
- Mechanical monitoring — the cycle's time, temperature, and pressure printout. Confirms the machine ran, not that the load was sterilized.
- Chemical indicators — external tape confirms only that a package was processed, not that it is sterile. This is the distinction students most often get wrong. Internal indicators confirm the agent reached inside the package.
- Biological indicators — live spores, the only method that directly demonstrates the sterilization process killed the most resistant organisms. Required at defined intervals and with every implant load.
Two professional habits follow. Check every indicator before opening a package onto the field, and if anything is wrong — a failed indicator, wet packaging, a compromised seal, an expired or unreadable label — do not use it. And understand that immediate-use steam sterilization is not a shortcut for inadequate instrument inventory; it is intended for genuinely urgent situations, it is subject to strict conditions, and its routine use to keep a schedule moving is a recognized problem in real facilities.
⚠ Sterile technique: the rules are consequences, not conventions
The principles taught here should be learned as reasoning rather than recitation, because that is what makes them hold under pressure.
- Only sterile touches sterile. A sterile item contacting anything unsterile is contaminated, regardless of appearance.
- Gowns are sterile only in front, from chest to sterile field level, and sleeves from cuff to elbow. The back is not sterile — which is why sterile personnel pass back to back and never turn their back on the field.
- Tables are sterile only at table level. Anything below the level of the table is unsterile, including a drape edge that falls.
- Never reach across a sterile field, and never allow a non-sterile person to.
- Moisture wicks contamination. A wet drape or package is contaminated — strike-through is a real and frequently missed mechanism.
- Keep sterile items in view. A field that has been left unattended cannot be assumed sterile.
The behaviour that matters most is not knowing these — it is saying so when one is broken, including when the person who broke it is senior. Programs teach that speaking up about a contamination break is always appropriate, and the surgical culture broadly supports it, because the alternative is a surgical site infection in a patient who cannot advocate for themselves.
⚠ Microbiology is not a hurdle course — it is why the practice works
Students frequently regard the microbiology component as an academic requirement standing between them and the operating room. Three examples of why it is not:
- Spores are why sterilization parameters are what they are. Bacterial endospores resist heat, drying, and many chemicals — which is why biological indicators use them, and why "it looks clean" is meaningless.
- Prions are why some instrumentation requires extraordinary handling. They are not inactivated by routine sterilization, and a technologist who does not know this cannot recognize the situation.
- Normal flora is why skin prep works the way it does — the patient's own organisms are the most common source of surgical site infection, which explains prep technique, hair removal practice, and antibiotic timing.
The recurring theme worth naming: the patient is usually the source. Understanding that changes how a technologist thinks about prep, draping, and traffic in the room.
⚠ Occupational exposure: know the protocol before the incident
Surgical technologists handle sharps continuously in a fast environment, and sharps injury is the principal bloodborne pathogen exposure route. The practices that reduce it — the neutral zone or hands-free passing technique, announcing sharps, never passing a sharp with both parties' hands on it, and immediate accounting for every blade and needle — are taught here and are the reason the injury rate is lower than it would otherwise be.
The point students most need: know the post-exposure protocol before you need it. Under OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard an exposure requires immediate reporting and prompt medical evaluation, and delay reduces the effectiveness of post-exposure prophylaxis. Students routinely fail to report because they are embarrassed or do not want to stop a case; that is the wrong call every time. Hepatitis B vaccination is expected before clinical placement.
Accreditation, certification, and clearances
Florida has no licensure requirement for surgical technologists, so the credential is what matters in the market: most Florida hospitals and surgery centers require or strongly prefer the NBSTSA Certified Surgical Technologist (CST), and CST eligibility requires graduation from a program accredited by ARC/STSA through CAAHEP (or ABHES). Verify accreditation on the accreditor's own public list before enrolling — a graduate of a non-accredited program may be unable to sit the examination at all.
Clinical placement requires Level 2 background screening under § 435.04, Florida Statutes, immunizations, drug screening, and CPR. Note also that surgical technology is offered in Florida both as college-credit and as a PSAV clock-hour program; the two are not interchangeable and PSAV coursework does not transfer as college credit. Confirm which you are enrolling in.
Course format and position in the program
STS1303 is a 3-credit course of approximately 45 contact hours, consistent with this repository's STS1308 at the same values; note that the C-suffixed courses in this prefix run higher (STS1307C at 3 credits / 60 hours) because of their integrated laboratories. Daytona State requires STS1302 and offers it in fall.
Expect written examination on microbiology and sterilization science together with practical check-offs on hand antisepsis, gowning, gloving, and sterile field setup — performed and scored against a checklist until correct. The standard is competence, not an average, and for good reason.
How Florida course levels affect transfer
The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.
One caveat overrides the general rule in accredited health programs: they are lock-step cohorts with sequenced clinical placements, and they accept transfer into the professional sequence rarely and only case by case. Expect to repeat coursework when moving between programs, and get any transfer evaluation in writing.