By K. Richard Douglas
Children’s of Alabama is the number-one rated children’s hospital in Alabama, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. The hospital receives high rankings within pediatric specialty services; ranking in the top 50 nationally in all 10 services areas, including cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology and gastrointestinal surgery, neonatology, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, pulmonology and urology.
In this center of excellence for pediatric care, the medical devices must be managed expertly.
Supervising the Biomedical Engineering Department at Children’s is Jason Head, CBET. Head has been a biomed for 37 years and has been certified for a long time also.
“[I] have been a CBET since 1987 and took the test so long ago that I am grandfathered, so that I do not have to take the test again,” he says.
“I started out as a biomed tech at Schumpert Med Center. I have worked as a lead tech at East Alabama Medical Center, a field service rep for Datascope and Cobe/Gambro, a lead tech at Children’s Hospital of Alabama and am currently working as the biomed supervisor at Children’s Hospital of Alabama,” Head adds.
Head’s acumen for electronics prompted an electronics course instructor at Jefferson State Community College to suggest a biomed training program.
“When I was in high school, I went to the area ‘trade school,’ where I studied ‘radio and TV,’ which was a basic electronics course which prepared you to work on radio and TVs and industrial electronics. I excelled in this program and my teacher told me about a program called biomedical equipment technology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where they would teach me about medical electronics. I knew that I did not want to work on TVs for the rest of my life and that ended up being one of the smarter decisions I made,” Head says.
His specialty areas as a biomed are dialysis, the cardiovascular area, ECMO, physiological monitors and their associated networks.
Leave it Better than I Found it
Beyond the scope of a biomeds more routine assignments are the larger projects that can come along periodically. Some of the most challenging can be new construction projects or additions to existing facilities. Head has firsthand experience with this situation.
“In 2012, we opened a new 14-story facility in which we had to make sure that all of the new equipment was inventoried, checked and placed in the correct rooms,” Head says.
He says that they were implementing an RFID system in this new facility and he had to walk each area and name the IR and RF sensors so that they could track the equipment.
“We also had to rent transport monitors for the move of patients across three crosswalks from the old facility and the new facility that we did over the weekend. We also had to move existing equipment and set it up during the move, which included two intensive care areas, a step-down unit and a large ER with Level 1 trauma rooms. We had to do our day-to-day activities during the day and got the new facility ready after-hours and weekends, but we had the perfect group of guys and we pulled it off without any major issues,” Head adds.
More recent challenges are more in line with national trends. He says current issues include staffing, supply shortages and training new technicians.
Head does important work even when away from supervising biomeds on-the-job.
“I am also a firefighter/EMT in my hometown, am learning to play the banjo, and enjoy being with family and friends and following the Alabama Crimson Tide,” he says.
The family he mentions includes a long marriage.
“I have been married for almost 30 years to the prettiest and sweetest woman that I have ever met. We have three wonderful children and two grandchildren,” Head says.
He has some unselfish thoughts about his many years in the profession.
“I have enjoyed my time as a biomed and want to be able to leave it better than I found it by helping, and trying to teach the newer biomeds coming into the field what I have picked up in my journey,” Head says.
The pediatric patients at Children’s of Alabama can be confident that they have both the services of a world-class health organization along with expert biomeds, supervised by a conscientious professional.
