CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - With a steady hand and a 3-D view, 65 students from all three Dorchester District 2 high schools are getting a hands on lesson on from the Davinci XI.
It’s a state of the art medical robot simulator similar to the real one worth more than 2 million dollars and used for some surgeries at Summerville Medical Center.
“Just the precision and stability, it looks like real life in front of you. It’s remarkable,” said Summerville High Junior Malik Mixon.
The hope of the field trip is that the students who are in bio-med science classes will leave with a better understanding of how robotics is improving the quality of healthcare for patients.
“I love helping people so this has been interesting,”says Summerville High School Junior Annelise Pagon.
Mixon says the training is in line with his hope to one day become a trauma surgeon.
“Since second grade it’s always been a passion to help people and seeing them get better,” says Mixon.
“To have kids who are interested and to have them to explore those interests is fun for us,” says Urogynocologist Dr. Cary Fishburne with Summerville Medical Center.
This field trip is also a competition as the students were paired up into groups of two for a robot Olympics to see which pair can master a surgery simulation and score the closest to a 100.
Malik and Annelise were the first team to give it a try.
“It was interesting to figure out everything, and it was hard at first,” says Pagon.
The big question is how did they do.
“They were saying someone had zeros, and 24′s and he was like,'We did really good.' This was an experience I will remember and I can’t believe I trained on equipment that doctors use around the world its remarkable,” says Mixon.
Annelise and Malik won the robot Olympic challenge with a score of 74.
They also won plenty of memories and a bag full of goodies.
This is the first year for Summerville Medical Center to host the robotics field trip and they say it was a big success.
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