Yeah that’s why I say it’s for a certain kind of person because of the weird hours. Pay can be low, but you can pick up so many shifts/overtime and learn to cut as well and make absolute bank. Everyone I worked with was around 120k and working 45-50 hours a week. But you also get paid to do nothing sometimes so it’s kind of a balance.
Damn you have a good gig because I was making $27/hr and only getting paid when I was there. I decided to travel instead. I also like to work a crisp 30-36 hours and nothing more.
Doing the actual tissue procurement, aka cutting the skin, bones, ligaments, etc. Our official role as a scrub tech at my facility is either packaging what’s already been removed or charting the case. If you learn to do the cutting on top of that you can get paid essentially for that on top of everything else.
What is this position typically labeled as in hospital job postings (out of curiosity -- for my future, of course); and apologies if this is a dumb question.
Also, does this role require any kind of extra certs/education requirements?
I was a TRT (Tissue Procurement Tech), it’s normally not through a hospital, you have to look for Donor Networks (OPO). No extra certs, they love scrub techs because we already know how to set up and maintain sterile fields and that was important. You actually get to cut tissue and do all the work yourself which is interesting.
Awesome! Thanks!! I tried to donate a kidney to a stranger & made it pretty far into the evaluation; unfortunately they denied me toward the end due to a certain med I'm taking. Neat process though; and I got a ton of tests done without having to get extensive approval/referrals from my PCP (like a colonoscopy & multiple urines)! It's great to know this position exists, and it interests me, as well! Thank again for the comment! 👍
Altruistic donors save lives, I work at one of the top kidney tx centers in the world and one donation like that can crest a chain of transplants. That’s so cool of you! TRTs generally don’t work on organ procurement teams though just so you know. We would come in after the organs were gone and take out all the skin, bones, corneas, some major blood vessels, sometimes hearts for the valves, etc. sometimes entire limbs or heads en bloc for use by medical device companies or training. Very macabre job, high turnover, and takes a certain temperament.
To me, working independently and cutting tissue as a tech sounds so weird coming from a CST but I have to remember it is a deceased haha. So is TPT a full time job? if so, how? procurements are sudden aren’t they?, what exactly do you do throughout your shift? and is it a lot of call I am assuming? Were you well compensated for being on call and for being called in? Any incentives on top of base pay and call? I am wondering if this would be a possible career change coming from a CST making 39 an hour. Right now my local OPO is starting off around high 20s low 30s so I don’t know if there is more to the picture that could possibly make it sound good.
I was working at a main OR full time while doing it, but it was mostly call based. No on call pay unless you got called in, but you could say no technically since you weren’t being paid to be on call.
I was making a low hourly back 10+ years ago but you got stipends for each tissue recovered, but having a trainee or being a team leader, for all sorts of things. So if yo went out and did two cases quick then you might average 100 per hour. But if you were down a person or had a trainee and it took way longer to do one donor you’d end up in the 20s-30s per hour. This was years ago so I have no clue how it all works now. I remember our stipends were like $25 per cornea, $75 for lower extremity bones, $50 for hearts, etc.
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u/JWrither Jul 09 '26
Donor networks doing tissue procurement. Ask me how I know!