Sarah Price may have had her scrubs on, but she was not prepared to operate. The 6-year-old who won a contest to name the new surgical robot at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie shook her head vigorously from side to side when the nurse asked her if she wanted to practice using "Poppy".
The nurses soon coaxed Sarah to climb into the chair, peer through the viewfinder and thread her thumbs and index fingers through the loops on the fingertip controls. By pinching her fingers together and moving her wrists, she could manipulate the tiny clippers on the arms of the $1.7 million robot to grab rubber loops and place them on small rubber cones.
Sarah said she chose the name Poppy because the robot's arms "pop out to make sick people better." She smiled when Arkaime Kess, the hospital's robotics coordinator, showed her the plastic sign doctors will put on the door when they are operating. It reads, "Poppy in progress."
Sarah was one of three finalists in the naming contest offered to students at nearby Glen Burnie Park Elementary School. Of the 360 students, more than half participated and sent entries to the principal. The other two finalists were fellow first-grader Aspen Teter and third-grader Matthew Young. The event was meant to showcase the hospital's high-tech addition, but school officials said it also showed the three students a possible career field.
"Look how talented they are," said Principal Brenda Care, as each student took turns on the machine. "I'm very impressed, and who knows, maybe one of them will be operating on us in the future."
It also gave the teachers a chance to give the students another lesson: Hospitals don't have to be feared, said Beth Jones, Sarah's first-grade teacher. Sarah got to wear her oversized scrubs when she told her class later that morning what she did.
"I think that they think it's a scary place," said Jones, who came along on the trip to the hospital.
Although the medical center is the first to buy a high-definition da Vinci Surgical System in the Baltimore area, many hospitals have been using earlier versions of the system for several years. For example, Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis bought its system two years ago.
The machine comprises a control booth of sorts where doctors sit and manipulate the arms using the fingertip controls. Foot pedals adjust the camera and move the robotic arms in and out of the patient. The doctor looks through a view finder to see a 3-D image projected by cameras inserted inside the patient.
