By Steven J. Yelton, P.E., AAMIF
As I have mentioned many times and often in this column, educators are all striving to make the best HTM program possible. We want our program to be great! We also are generally very open to help in achieving this goal. The bottom line is that we are having difficulty supplying enough qualified graduates to fill needed positions.
Whenever I speak to colleagues in the HTM field about technicians and the education of technicians, the comment “We don’t have enough and we need more” always comes up. The few programs that are in place around the U.S. and Canada are working very hard to recruit and graduate quality HTM technicians. As we have talked about for many years, we just don’t have enough.
The programs that are in existence are usually providing ample graduates for the needs of the local area, but it’s difficult if you don’t have an HTM college program near you. Those of us who are involved with two-year programs find that very often students do not want to leave the area upon graduation. In fact, I have found that many times they don’t even want to move across town.
AAMI has made strides in providing help in the process of recruiting and educating HTM (biomed) technicians with initiatives like the apprenticeship program, certifications and an education standard. These have proven to be helpful; a great start and I’m sure AAMI will continue to work diligently to this end.
I wonder if an add-on to that might be a face to face/virtual education program for HTM technicians? This might be something that AAMI can undertake or support. Let me outline what I am thinking.
What if there was a program that offered two biomedical instrumentation courses that equated to two college semester courses? These courses would require a lecture and laboratory component. My thought is that maybe the courses could be offered two times per year both live and virtual. The live version would require the students to be on-site for 1 week or 40 hours of class time. The virtual would require the students to complete 40 hours of online instruction over a 15-week period. Both would require tests to validate the education process, and both would require pre-requisite knowledge of math, science, electronics, etc. Regardless of how the student completes the lecture portion of the course, they would need to complete a laboratory component locally. This would mean a need to be at a local college that could provide the laboratory experience or at a hospital or company that had the resources to provide the laboratory experience.
I am a strong advocate of the internship or cooperative education component of education. I feel that this should be required for every student. I like to mention this whenever I have the opportunity. I feel this is not only key to any program, but it is ultimately an area that requires all of us in HTM to work together. I feel that a true strength of any program is the hands-on work requirement. A large amount of the training is hands-on or on-the-job training. This would be no different. Cooperative education or internships would be strongly recommended. This would be built-in for students currently working in the HTM industry.
I strongly recommend an advisory committee be formed to make recommendations for these courses. Again, this would provide a great resource for everyone involved.
AAMI has a document entitled “Core Competencies for the HTM Entry-Level Technician” which has served as a guideline for lots of the educational documents and initiatives that have been proposed. This was also taken into consideration along with the apprenticeship program and accreditation programs when developing the AAMI Education Standard.
I feel that a program like this could be helpful for everyone involved. An existing college HTM program could use this as an add-on to their program where they would supplement it locally. A hospital or company that is having difficulty finding qualified HTM technicians could use this to supplement a candidate’s background or enable an existing technician to upgrade skills to move into an HTM role.
I have spent many years in the education field. I believe that this could help defray some of the costs involved in a college starting or even continuing an HTM program. It would also provide some national guidance as to what material should be covered in the program.
I’m just brainstorming here trying to get some traction for an outside the box way of thinking to supplement the HTM workforce.
