SALEM, Va. (WDBJ) - LewisGale took its surgical robot out of the hospital and took it into the Salem Civic Center Monday. It’s a chance for local students to learn about performing robotic surgery.
It’s not every day high school students get to try their hands as surgeons, so it was a unique opportunity when Salem High School and North Cross students spent the afternoon at the Salem Civic Center-doing just that.
“It’s really cool, it’s actually really cool and very inspiring to see that this kind of thing can be made now, that we can make robots that are able to do surgery better than people,” Logan Boettcher, a senior at Salem High School, said.
He is on his school’s Spartan Robotics Team, which builds robots to compete in competitions. So he says getting to test LewisGale’s minimally-invasive surgical robot is invaluable.
“You see the kind of things that that robot does. You can look up nice and close in it and see all the different mechanisms that make everything work,” he said.
Stepping into a surgeon’s shoes and trying out the robot made Boettcer better able to visualize his future as an engineer.
“I love seeing that. That’s what makes me tick, seeing that kind of stuff. I want to eventually design something and make something like that, help the next wave of engineering,” Boettcher said.
“People that are interested in robotics, young people that are considering careers in engineering, get that exposure at an early age so they can see what their fruits of their labor can be,” Joseph Troise, an obstetrician-gynecologist at LewisGale Medical Center in Salem, said.
The experience allowed students to see the part they may one day play in the future of engineering and medicine.
“This is very inspiring,” Boettcher said.
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