Operating Room Techniques Laboratory is the hands-on course in which surgical technology students learn to function in the operating room. It covers the furniture, equipment, and supplies used during surgical procedures, and develops the core physical skills of the role: room preparation, the surgical scrub, gowning and gloving, establishing and maintaining the sterile field, patient positioning, surgical skin preparation, and draping. Skills are evaluated through laboratory practical examinations, and students must simulate a surgical procedure from start to finish — successfully — before proceeding to clinical rotation.
Within the SCNS taxonomy, STS is the Surgical Technology prefix, and the L suffix denotes a laboratory course. Daytona State publishes it at 3 credits with prerequisites STS1303 and STS1327L, offered in spring with a $388.39 lab fee — a figure that reflects genuine consumable cost, since students expend real gowns, gloves, drapes, and supplies. It appears at approximately four Florida institutions.
This is the gate course of the program. Everything before it is knowledge; this is where a student either can or cannot perform the physical work of a scrub. The requirement to complete a full simulated procedure successfully before clinical is not a formality — it exists because a student who cannot maintain a sterile field in a laboratory cannot be placed with a live patient.
Daytona State's description states it plainly: students must simulate a surgical procedure from start to finish, and successful performance is mandatory before proceeding to clinical rotations. That makes this the most consequential practical evaluation in the program.
What is actually being assessed is not memorized steps but whether you can hold sterile technique under time pressure while doing several things at once — which is exactly what the operating room requires. Students fail it for predictable reasons: contaminating themselves while turning, losing track of the field while attending to an instrument, setting up the Mayo stand in a way they cannot work from, or freezing when something goes wrong.
The preparation that works: practise the sequence until it is automatic, so that attention is free for the unexpected; set up the same way every time, because a consistent arrangement is what lets you find an instrument without looking; and practise recovering from a break rather than only practising perfection — announcing a contamination and correcting it is a passing behaviour, and hiding it is a failing one.
The single most important behaviour taught in this course, and the one with the clearest patient consequence. A break in sterile technique is not a disgrace; a concealed break is, because the patient bears the risk.
Students are reluctant to announce their own contamination out of embarrassment, and instructors watch for exactly this. The correct action is immediate and unambiguous: say it, stop, and correct it — regrown, reglove, replace the item, re-drape. It costs a minute. A surgical site infection costs the patient a readmission and sometimes far more.
The same applies to a break by someone else, including someone senior. The surgical culture broadly supports speaking up about contamination, and programs teach it as an obligation rather than an option, because the anaesthetised patient cannot advocate for themselves.
The positioning content in this course is where students first handle each other on an operating table, and it is where the injuries described in this repository's STS1308 guide become concrete. The recurring risks — ulnar neuropathy from an unpadded elbow, brachial plexus injury from an arm abducted beyond 90 degrees, common peroneal nerve injury from lithotomy stirrup pressure, and pressure injury on bony prominences — are all preventable by padding, correct limb placement, and attention.
Two practical points: practise on classmates with the same care you would give a patient, because that is how the habit forms; and everyone in the room owns positioning, so a student who notices an unpadded elbow and says so is doing the job correctly regardless of who positioned the patient.
Surgical technologists handle sharps continuously in a fast environment, and sharps injury is the principal bloodborne pathogen exposure route in the operating room. The practices taught here are what reduce it: the neutral zone or hands-free passing technique, in which a sharp is placed in a designated area rather than passed hand to hand; announcing sharps audibly; never having two people's hands on a sharp simultaneously; and accounting for every blade and needle throughout the case.
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 prophylaxis. Students routinely fail to report because they do not want to interrupt a case; that is the wrong call every time. Hepatitis B vaccination is expected before clinical placement.
Daytona State publishes STS1304L at 3 credits with a $388.39 lab fee, prerequisites STS1303 and STS1327L, offered in spring. The 90 contact hours given here follows the laboratory convention of roughly two contact hours per credit hour per week, and is consistent with this repository's STS2324C at 4 credits / 90 hours. It is a derived value — confirm the scheduled hours on your syllabus.
Assessment is by practical check-off: each skill performed and scored against a checklist, repeated until it meets standard, culminating in the full simulated procedure. The standard is competence rather than an average, and for good reason. Students should expect to spend open lab time beyond scheduled hours; the skills are motor learning, and they consolidate with repetition.
Florida has no licensure requirement for surgical technologists, which makes the credential decisive: 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. Legislation to require certification has been introduced in various states over time; verify current Florida requirements rather than assuming.
Clinical placement requires Level 2 background screening under § 435.04, Florida Statutes, immunizations, drug screening, and CPR.
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: surgical technology programs are accredited, 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. 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.
Generated September 2, 2026 · Updated September 2, 2026