As in any career field, any profession, the means toward advancement or security is often based on the actions taken by the employee to get better, more knowledgeable or more competent at what they do. For healthcare technology management professionals, the quickest route to getting ahead, beyond solid job performance, is to beef up your knowledge through education, training or certification.
Author: K. Richard Douglas
During the 1980s, the term “throw another shrimp on the barbie,” became a part of the American lexicon. Americans were exposed to some of the jargon that is common in the land down under; or so they thought. The phrase was originally made popular by Australian actor Paul Hogan for an Australian tourism board commercial that ran in the U.S. The irony is that Australians don’t use the term “shrimp,” but instead “prawns,” which would single out any American visiting the island nation who was trying to sound Australian.
Jennifer DeFrancesco, MS, CCE, CHTM, who is Chief of Biomedical Engineering at the Indianapolis VA Medical Center (Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center) and the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 11, recently won the VA’s Chief Biomedical Engineer of the Year Award. That award encompasses the entire VA system.
In previous Biomed Adventures, we have featured HTM professionals who had a sideline, hobby, talent or adventure worthy of sharing. Usually, there has been a single subject, beyond their work as a biomed, that caught our attention. In the case of Eric Pabon, there are several.
In 2012, there was an intense focus in the HTM community about evidence-based PM versus a manufacturer’s recommended maintenance schedules. The issue moved front and center when CMS declared that a manufacturer’s schedule had to be followed in late 2011. This threw the proverbial fly in the ointment for many who had developed well-reasoned alternative methodologies.
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia, sits in a quiet neighborhood near downtown. However, the hospital is abuzz with activity and the Biomedical Engineering Department provides the work behind the scenes that keeps everything running smoothly.
After 30 years as an HTM professional, Dean Skillicorn has done it all. The Project Service Manager/Operations Manager at Philips Healthcare in Los Angeles saw duty as a BMET and field service representative before entering management. Like so many in the field, Skillicorn received his training in the military, but his original intention was to train for a different area within electronics.
It was the dream of Biomed Ryan Zamudio to get behind the wheel of a fixed wing aircraft. Based on his prior occupation, he might have ended up sailing through the sky at 1,500 mph, but he settled for the more leisurely pace of a Piper.
According to the website of the Florida Biomedical Society: “The FBS BMET of Year was established as a way to recognize those biomedical professionals that distinguish themselves during the course of each calendar year.” The society’s chapters each submit a nominee for the annual award.
Hospitals often bear the names of benefactors; those who donated funds for construction or a founding physician. A hospital can also be named after the person who deeded the land that it was built on. That was the case when the future mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, John Peter Smith deeded five acres of land in the downtown area in 1877. The hospital got its official name in 1954.
