• Louis Catholic School students visited Saint Francis Hospital to interact with surgical robots.
• The visit aimed to inspire students in STEM fields to potentially enter future healthcare careers.
• Saint Francis Hospital is a leader in robotic surgery in the Memphis area.

Middle school students and high-priced medical technology would typically spell disaster.

But children roaming between rooms, even with chaperones, touching and interacting with medical-grade robotic machines priced upwards of $2 millions, is exactly what happened on the first floor of Saint Francis Hospital Thursday morning.

St. Louis Catholic School's robotics program had the chance to see, touch and work with some of the Saint Francis robots that doctors use to preform hospital surgeries. The group from the East Memphis catholic school was part of the school's STEM robotics club.

Christopher Jenkins, chief operating officer of Saint Francis Hospital, said engaging young students outside of the classroom with the latest technology helps reinvigorate learning.

"Who knows, we may have future healthcare professionals within this group, and that for us, that's really exciting," Jenkins said.

This is the second year the hospital has invited students from the Memphis area to see the hospital's medical robots. Jenkins said they hope to continue this program and expand.

"We're very fortunate that we have members of our medical staff that will come in and jump in and join...Then we've got, obviously, nurses and our leadership, and then the reps and the companies that come in to help us as well," Jenkins said.

The students ranged from sixth to seventh grade, and some had recently been awarded top prizes in a region-wide robotics competition. Megan Scherson, 7th grade teacher at St. Louis Catholic, runs the school's robotics program.

"So we participate in the program called First Lego League...it's a program where they have to build and code robot to do several missions on a board. They have two and a half minutes to do as many missions as you can and each year the theme changes. So this year (it) was submerged," Scherson said. "...In addition to that, they have a research side where they have to solve a real-world problem."

One team from St. Louis Catholic took first place for the innovative project and another team took first place for robot design for the West Tennessee district.

Dr. Alan Hammond, general surgeon with Saint Francis Hospital, works with the robots mainly for general surgery, neurologic surgery and gynecologic surgery.

"It's all minimally invasive. It's like laparoscopic surgery to the next level," Hammond said.

St. Francis Hospital leads the way for robotic surgery in Memphis. They have multiple da

Vinci robots and do more robotic surgeries than other hospitals in the area, Hammond said

"I do most of my surgery robotically. I'm proctoring one of my partners today as he's adopting the robot. And that's exciting to see people come along and do this technique," Hammond said.

Hands on learning, both in and out of school

One of the robots on display, the da Vinci, had an interactive element where students were tasked with placing small circular bands on prongs varying in size. Caroline SilvestriHiggins, a seventh grade student, said the da Vinci robot was her favorite.

"It was basically like playing a video game, like a virtual reality video game," Silvestri-Higgins said.

The da Vinci robot actually had to perform surgery Thursday afternoon. So when students had lunch, the da Vinci robot was whisked away to surgery.

Another robot on display performed minimally invasive knee surgery.

"We were...like, cutting out the bone, but like, not really doing it," Silvestri-Higgins said. "And so, basically, the robot would tell us, like, not to go in certain places. Like it would stop whenever, like, we tried to go in another place."

Connor Laundre and Derek Simon, sixth grade students, said they hope to work with robots in the future but are undecided on how. The duo were apart of the competition First Lego League West Tennessee, where their team won an award for robotics design.

"We won a special one for our robot design because we built a first one, very clunky, didn't drive straight," Simon said. "So five weeks and we had already had a lot coded, we decided that we had to take that apart and build a whole new robot. So that means we basically had to get rid of everything we had done."