I hear more and more requests for a national, chapter-based biomedical association. Many of the local associations are having trouble with participation, membership, attendance and volunteers. It seems as if there are always lots of suggestions about things to do, and always too few volunteers to do them.
This is the way it is in almost all associations (biomed and others) who base their activities 100 percent on volunteer effort. Most of us are too busy to do very much other than work and take care of our home life.
Let me identify the root problem and propose a solution.
Is the real problem that associations don’t have enough volunteers, or could it be that we are trying to do too much with the limited volunteers that they have? We have been trying for years to get more people active.
They just don’t want to. So let’s stop beating our heads against the wall and begin working smarter. If we only have a few volunteers, how can they have the greatest impact on the profession and members?
Certainly you cannot do everything that is asked of you. So why not specialize? If you focus on a narrower goal, you have a real chance of doing it very well, instead of doing a lot of things poorly.
Let me give an example. CABMET (the Colorado association) has chosen to focus most of their limited volunteer effort on creating an excellent BMET Certification review course. In addition to local meetings and an annual Symposium, they offer a high-quality review course to Biomeds all over the country.
What if all associations utilized their limited resources of volunteers and chose to do one thing realy well? Let me propose some examples of areas which Biomeds would be better off if they had a good resource to look up important information:
PM Procedures – Why create your own? Someone could collect PM procedures from all over the country and make them available via a search and download.
Master Biomed Association List – Why should every association try to keep current with the contact information for all associations? Somebody could become the master reference.
Policies and Procedures – Why doesn’t someone collect them from all over and put them in one location – on their website?
End of Life Database and letters – META used to do this (courtesy Masterplan), but no one is doing it now. We could use a one-stop-shop.
CMMS Software – evaluations, comments, forums on various programs.
Regulatory information – Why doesn’t some association keep data on CMS, JC and other regulatory issues for the industry to read and access?
Manuals, Operations and Service – It would be good if a huge repository could be created and links posted to various libraries around the world.
Biomed Promotional ideas – CMIA has a number of videos, but there are surely more.
BMET training materials – PowerPoints, books, programs, apps and all sorts of reference material is available, but it takes lots of time to search them out.
These are just a few of the dozens of areas of specialization that are needed.
If every association in the U.S. took a single, narrowly focused area to be the leader in, then we, as a profession, would have 40 or so high-quality resources that we could go to for information and resources. Let’s each ask our association to pick an area, and be the ultimate resource for the profession.