About 400 students from York and Lancaster county schools packed into Rock Hill's Sports and Events Center this week, rotating through stations where they got to examine four different surgical robots up close. Each stop earned them a stamp in a passport booklet, but the real prize was a rare look at what happens inside an operating room, from the mechanics of robotic arms to the surgeons and technicians who run them.
The event was Piedmont Medical Network's robotics symposium, an annual gathering designed to give students a chance to explore careers in medicine, engineering, and technology, according to WBTV. Students who attended Tuesday met with medical professionals and learned how surgeons rely on robots for urologic, general, orthopedic, and spine surgeries. Sreeya Jonnalagadda, a student who wants to pursue cardiothoracic surgery, said she hopes to learn how surgeons use technology to enhance their ability to perform long surgeries, adding that the symposium provides helpful insight into her future career, per the station's report.
Robots Are Tools, Not Replacements
Organizers were careful to frame the robots as instruments rather than substitutes for medical judgment. Medical robots do not replace doctors, the station's report notes, but instead serve as tools surgeons use during procedures. Lily McGann, another student at the event, said the robotic tools help doctors and surgeons perform tasks more efficiently, according to the same account.
Piedmont Medical Network launched the symposium series in 2024, and it has grown each year since, hosting hundreds of York County students at its second annual event at the Rock Hill Sports & Event Center in September 2025 before expanding the initiative again this year, according to Piedmont Medical Network. Past symposia have featured hands-on stations with Globus Medical spine surgery systems, Stryker's Mako knee replacement tools, and Intuitive's da Vinci 5 robot, which challenged students to unwrap candy using robotic arms to test their fine motor skills, per the Clover School District.
A Pipeline for More Than Surgeons
Shellie Milwood said surgical services offer many opportunities and that the symposium could encourage students to eventually join Piedmont Medical Network, per WBTV's report. She noted that surgical services include openings well beyond the roles of surgeon and nurse, and students who catch the bug may go on to pursue operating-room shadowing or meetings with anesthesiologists. Milwood added that students have pursued future opportunities after attending the program in past years, the station reports.
That messaging lines up with the sheer scale of robotic surgery now embedded in Piedmont's own operating rooms. The network celebrated 5,000 da Vinci robotic-assisted procedures at its Rock Hill facility in February 2025, while its Fort Mill hospital surpassed 1,000 da Vinci procedures in December 2024, according to WRHI. Piedmont also brought Stryker's Mako SmartRobotics system to Fort Mill in late 2023 and to Rock Hill in July 2024, completing more than 100 Mako-assisted knee and hip replacement surgeries across the market by January 2025.
Timing Tied to Rock Hill's Trauma Push
The symposium arrives at a pivotal moment for the health system, which rebranded from Piedmont Medical Center to Piedmont Medical Network in June 2026, unifying its two hospitals, four emergency departments, four outpatient centers, and regional EMS service under one identity. That rebrand followed a major regional realignment in May 2026 that shifted primary labor and neonatal care to the Fort Mill campus while converting the Rock Hill hospital into a high-acuity hub focused on complex surgery, neurosurgery, and Level II trauma development, as Hoodline reported in coverage of the campus shift. Piedmont also opened a 10,000-square-foot freestanding emergency department in Indian Land in May 2026, its first in that community, featuring 12 private exam rooms, trauma bays, CT imaging, and round-the-clock care.
Behind the recruiting push is a workforce squeeze that hospitals across the region are racing to solve. Piedmont has run targeted campaigns offering sign-on bonuses up to $30,000 alongside student loan repayment and tuition assistance for operating room cardiovascular RNs and certified surgical technologists. Nationally, employment for surgical technologists is projected to grow 5% from 2024 to 2034, creating about 8,700 job openings annually as an aging population and wider adoption of robotic and minimally invasive surgery drive demand, according to CSTSetup.
Piedmont is not the only regional player courting teenagers into scrubs. Regional health systems, including MUSC Health and Piedmont Medical Network, hosted more than 45 York and Lancaster county high school students during summer 2026 for multi-week volunteer and clinical shadowing programs across hospital departments, according to MUSC Health Lancaster Medical Center. For students like Jonnalagadda and McGann, Tuesday's stamped passports may end up marking the first step toward filling those very openings.
