The growing need for new healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals is nothing new to those familiar with the industry. For at least a decade people have expressed concerns regarding the day when the many baby boomers will retire from the field creating a large void in qualified biomeds.
Filling the gaps created by baby boomer retirements has resulted in some unique ways in which to educate and train the next generations of HTM professionals. TechNation reached out to several people in the industry to find out more about internships, apprenticeships and mentorships. Participating in the roundtable article are College of Biomedical Equipment Technology President Richard L. “Monty” Gonzales, TRIMEDX Chief Human Resources and Diversity Officer Dawn Griffin, Nuvolo Vice President of Industry Solutions Heidi Horn, IAMERS General Counsel Robert Kerwin, AAMI Vice President of Healthcare Technology Management Danielle McGeary, Elite Biomedical BMET II Greg Seibert and ReNew Biomedical Apprenticeship Instructor and Field Service Tech Richard Woods.
Q: What are the most important things to look for when seeking a mentor?
Gonzales: Trust, without a doubt. Forming relationships of trust with leaders in the industry serves as the bedrock for any successful career. And, it’s a two-way street. Mentors have a tremendous responsibility to those looking to them for guidance and support as they grow as healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals.
Griffin: The most important component to identify when seeking a mentor is finding the right professional to support your goals and needs. Beforehand, ask yourself where you want to be in three to five years and find a mentor in that role. Selecting a mentor often requires asking professionals if they can provide the guidance you are seeking. Have they overcome challenges like what you are or will face? Do they have the capacity and willingness to serve as an advisor? Look for mentors that are not afraid to be direct. It’s great to surround yourself with professionals that highlight your strengths, but seek out those who care about your professional development and goals. Seek out those who aren’t reluctant to point out areas of improvement and encourage you to take on challenges. At TRIMEDX, we have a formal, structured mentor program for leaders, the MENTORXCHANGE program. This program invests in the growth and development of leaders to create a strong leadership pipeline, develop strong professional relationships and reinforce our culture of continuous learning. In addition to the MentorXchange program, we support and encourage informal mentoring and networking partnerships throughout the organization.
Horn: When seeking a mentor, there are essentially two kinds and you need both to grow your career. There’s the kind that is extremely knowledgeable about the work you do and can teach you new skills and share information about the industry to help you get better at your job. The other kind is usually a person of influence who can teach you how to navigate the political obstacle course that every organization has, give you projects that will help you showcase your abilities and even help promote you by being your champion and singing your praise to leadership. If you can find a mentor that fills these roles, make sure you hold onto them.
Kerwin: Willingness to spend the time. I recommend looking for a natural teacher who truly enjoys helping.
McGeary: When it comes to having a mentor, it is important to find someone that you feel comfortable talking to and admitting challenges to. Mentors should be compassionate and vested in your career success. I also always suggest having a mentor that is not directly in your chain of command. Sometimes you may want to talk to someone about a challenge who is not your boss and having perspectives outside of your organization can be valuable and diverse.
Seibert: First and foremost, a mentor should be enthusiastic about their career. They should be honest and trustworthy. A mentor needs to be able to be there for the support and motivation of their apprentice/intern.
Woods: Look for a mentor with experience in HTM, a good reputation in their organization and someone who networks with others. A mentor should be easy to talk with and give constructive feedback. They should also keep a positive attitude and try to help you see the good in all situations.
Q: How can a mentor help a biomed advance in the HTM field?
Gonzales: Mentors play so many important roles as guides, sounding-boards, experts, and sometimes just listening and supporting. The interesting thing about mentors is they typically don’t self-select. Mentors are chosen by those looking up to them for the examples they set and that is probably the most important thing a mentor can provide, a good example.
Griffin: There are many reasons why you should consider a mentoring relationship in the HTM field. One of the biggest is how it boosts the confidence of mentors and mentees alike. The great thing about mentoring is it only has one requirement: willingness to learn and share. The mentor is someone who can answer a mentee’s questions, provide guidance, sharpen skills, focus goals and offer a broader perspective of the organization. Mentoring is a great way for a mentee to develop their career and to learn from an experienced professional. At TRIMEDX, we believe mentoring and on-the-job training greatly enhance the growth, confidence and network of our associates. We encourage mentoring and on-the-job training because it creates a highly engaged culture committed to one another.
Horn: Good mentors can help advance the careers of anyone in the HTM field who has the drive, intelligence, social skills and willingness to learn. In my 20-plus years in HTM, I have seen dozens of people enter the field as entry-level BMETs years ago and today some are running their own large HTM departments, some are senior imaging specialists for large manufacturers, and some went on to be executives at organizations that sell to the HTM industry. All of them had mentors who took them under their wing, coached and guided them along the different stages of their career. However, it’s worth noting that their mentors recognized they had the drive, intelligence, social skills and willingness to learn. If they didn’t, it would be a waste of the mentors’ time.
Kerwin: Assisting in prioritizing, educational planning and helping to understand the culture
McGeary: Everyone should have a mentor no matter where they are in their career. Everyone has challenges in their day-to-day job, no matter what level they are at. As you progress in your career, what you need a mentor for changes but that need will always be there as learning never stops.
Seibert: Along with teaching the basics of the job, a mentor can instill a sense of purpose and pride for the work. The mentor can show the best way to set/hit personal goals. They can also help navigate the best ways to communicate with all different types of coworkers.
Woods: Hopefully, the mentor has learned from their experience in the field and can guide a new biomed on their journey in the HTM field. A mentor can provide connections and networking, which can be instrumental in helping someone establish a career. For example, one of our techs relocated to another state for personal reasons. By networking with previous connections in the area, I connected him to a hospital with an opening for a biomedical tech.
Q: What are some benefits of participating in an internship?
Gonzales: Internships and on-the-job training opportunities are a great opportunity for newly minted biomedical equipment technicians to engage with mentors and demonstrate their value. There are very few students that complete an academic program of study who know everything they need to know about the career they are embarking on. Internships serve as a means for students to test their knowledge, enhance their skills, gain experience and build strong relationships with potential employers. In our experience, the overwhelming majority of students that we have placed in internships have been hired by the employers supporting the program.
Griffin: There are significant benefits to participating in an internship program, including gaining hands-on experience, building a professional network, creating opportunities for future employment and acquiring professionalism and time-management skills. At TRIMEDX, we offer internships within various business units, such as biomedical engineering, software engineering, human resources, marketing, etc. We provide our interns with on-the-job training through shadowing experienced professionals. Ultimately, our goal is to share an inside perspective on how to work in a hospital or healthcare technology environment, as well as to help them to gain critical skills that can serve as the foundational elements on their journey and long-term career.
Horn: Internships are beneficial for people who are in a BMET degreed program or trade school to get some hands-on experience in a health care setting. Internships are a way to learn not only maintenance skills, but also how hospitals and HTM departments work, and that’s hard to teach from outside a hospital. For those of us who have been in the industry awhile, we know that being a good BMET is not just about being able to maintain the equipment. You also need to know how to properly enter information into the CMMS, communicate well with the clinicians, know how to order parts, what patient rooms you shouldn’t enter and the list goes on. These are all things you will learn as an intern.
Kerwin: Besides the “real life experience” the internship can help one ask the ultimate question: Is this a career I want?
McGeary: Internships are a great way to learn and supplement your formal education. You learn so much theory in school and an internship really teaches students how to apply that knowledge in a real-world environment. For BMETs, internships are a great way to see all the equipment in use clinically as well. Take the time to scrub into cases and see the equipment in action. Once you get a full-time job, you will not have the opportunity to do this. Learn as much as you can during your internships!
Seibert: I think the biggest benefit of an internship is the intern gains confidence in what/how to do the work. It can also really help with networking and getting to know others in the field. Internships also offer a chance to see different types of workspaces and develop skills.
Woods: An internship allows a person to experience firsthand what it is like in a profession, without making a career-deciding commitment. Someone may think they want to work in a particular field, but after “seeing behind the curtain,” decide otherwise. The internship is a temporary arrangement, so the intern has no obligation to stay afterward.
Q: What is the difference between an internship and an apprenticeship?
Gonzales: Both internships and apprenticeships are important features of growing the career field. We work with health care organizations, nationally, to place students in internships and on-the-job training opportunities. Internships are much less formal and typically shorter than apprenticeships. For example, the AAMI apprenticeship program is designed to last between 12-24 months. Both options are great for students looking to get a start in the HTM career field.
Griffin: Internships are work-based learning, while apprenticeship programs are work-based training. In an internship, we aim to provide early professionals with a holistic experience of the job, industry and specific tasks to help prepare them for a professional career. Apprenticeships are typically for those who are ready for a career change or have an interest in the field but don’t currently have the desire, means or life flexibility to go to college. It could also be someone in or just out of high school looking to gain specific training in a particular field or role. The journeys of both programs are vastly different. However, at TRIMEDX, we aim to provide all associates — full-time associates, interns, apprentices and everyone in between — with the experience, development and training to set them up for success, whether at TRIMEDX or other organizations.
Horn: In the HTM industry, the differences between an internship and apprenticeship are: 1) length of time 2) the career stage of most of the participants, and 3) who is sponsoring the program. Internships typically are sponsored by the hospital or other hiring organization – meaning the organization, along with the college, determines the training involved. Internships are usually geared toward younger people who are either in an HTM educational program or just graduated. While most internships are paid these days, it is a nominal amount, and they usually only last a few months. The only formally recognized apprenticeship program in HTM is AAMI’s BMET apprenticeship program. AAMI’s apprenticeship program is a two-year, highly structured program that combines education and paid, on-the-job training. The curriculum and training goals are established by AAMI and require the apprentices to achieve three, industry-recognized certifications. People becoming apprentices have been a wide spectrum of age ranges, many coming from other careers.
Kerwin: For some, an internship is tied to an academic requirement and an apprenticeship is supported, but outside the schooling. Depending upon the state or jurisdiction, there are also issues relative to compensation.
McGeary: Apprenticeships are formal and typically registered through the U.S. Department of Labor. Apprenticeships combine full-time work with hands-on learning, require 144 hours of formal learning a year and industry recognized credentials, such as certifications. Internships are less formal in the sense that they are not through the U.S. Department of Labor and do not have specific requirements that an employer must follow. Internships can vary from place to place whereas apprenticeships have a formal curriculum that must be followed no matter where you work.
Seibert: An internship is usually a semester or two during school. It gives the intern a chance to try the job out in different environments. An apprenticeship is usually a full-time position working side-by-side with a mentor to learn the job first-hand.
Woods: An internship is a low-paid or sometimes volunteer position in which the intern learns about the field and the company. Internships allow someone to determine if a field of work is right for them and if they want to commit to further education. An apprenticeship is a paid position where the apprentice learns the trade on the job and sometimes includes classroom study. An apprenticeship is for someone who decides to commit to a career and is willing to take the time and effort to learn.
Q: How does an apprenticeship compare to other education/training options?
Gonzales: Apprenticeships have been an important part of workforce development in the United States for a long time. Unlike a traditional education, where a student devotes the entirety of their development towards an academic pursuit, such as a degree, apprenticeships provide an opportunity for students to engage in a work environment, learning on the job, while simultaneously pursuing a formal education.
Griffin: Apprenticeships generally include structured criteria, and have a mentor, with defined criteria over an extended period. An apprenticeship will require a longer-term commitment.
Horn: Degreed education programs are a great way for people interested in HTM to get the skills they need to become a BMET or clinical engineer. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of these programs being offered. Since it’s hard to teach someone how to maintain equipment without actually touching the equipment, most programs require students to attend at least some of their classes in person. Therefore, they must live near the school, and the student must pay for their education. A major benefit of earning a degree is that there is very high demand from employers for graduating BMET and clinical engineering students. Also, most organizations today require degrees to go into management (if that’s something you aspire to). The AAMI BMET apprenticeship program, on the other hand, offers people interested in becoming a BMET the opportunity to learn their trade from their local hospital – assuming the hospital has enrolled in the program – and get paid while they are learning. It really opens the doors for a lot of potential BMETs that can’t move or afford to go to trade school or college. Nuvolo was so impressed with the ability of the AAMI BMET apprenticeship program to bring new BMET recruits to the industry, that we donated $10,000 to help pay for the apprentices’ certifications.
Kerwin: Apprenticeship is, for all intents and purposes, your first job or work experience in the area. The responsibilities are different as one is typically expected to assume responsibility.
McGeary: Apprenticeships are very formal and there is a standard curriculum. Apprenticeship are a great way to start a career or to change careers – especially for those who do not have the means to pay for traditional education. At the end of the apprenticeship, apprentices receive a formal certificate from the DOL and AAMI (for the BMET apprenticeship) that designates that the apprentice has been trained to a minimum competency level and standards. This is different from a formal degree program.
Seibert: Usually an apprenticeship is a full-time, paid position where the apprentice concentrates fully on their field of choice. They gain the knowledge and experience while working with a mentor to see what success looks like in that field. College can be very costly and sometimes it does not even offer the chosen career path of the individual.
Woods: My personal experience is this: years ago, I attended DeVry, where after 18 months, I received an electronics technician diploma. This cost quite a bit of money (thanks again, Mom and Dad!), but I was now qualified for an entry-level engineering technician job with Texas Instruments. Had an apprenticeship been available, I could have begun my career without prior schooling. The expensive education I received from a university would have been given to me by my employer.
Q: What are some benefits of participating in an apprenticeship?
Gonzales: There are several benefits associated with participating in an apprenticeship. Perhaps the biggest benefit is that they provide opportunities for rapid entry into the career field, learning and earning at the same time. Apprentices have the unique opportunity to engage with industry leaders, learning from professionals with decades of experience and a passion for mentoring new technicians. At the same time, apprentices receive a salary and engage in related learning and instruction. We have supported the AAMI BMET apprenticeship program for the past few years, as an RTI provider, delivering the required educational components of the apprenticeship program. I should mention that this process is also very rewarding for those of us supporting apprentices.
Griffin: An apprenticeship allows for extensive hands-on training, career development and advancement, targeted support and, most importantly, a pathway for the next step on one’s professional journey. TRIMEDX offers comprehensive apprenticeship opportunities. In fact, last November, TRIMEDX joined the AAMI BMET apprenticeship program as an employer partner. We combine traditional education with up to 6,000 hours of on-the-job learning in the HTM field. The program is intended to provide our apprentices with the training they need to succeed while helping facilitate a strong HTM pipeline.
Horn: The benefit of the AAMI BMET apprenticeship program is that apprentices can get the needed training at any hospital near them that is participating in the apprenticeship program. They don’t have to move if there is not a college near them with an HTM program. They also earn a salary while they are being trained. This opens up opportunities for people interested in the HTM field who may not have had the option to move or pay for college. For employers, having an apprentice is a great way to see if the apprentice will be a good fit for the organization before they become a full-time employee.
Kerwin: I am hearing those who participate in an apprenticeship frequently receive permanent job offers.
McGeary: For apprentices the benefit of participating in an apprenticeship is that they get work experience and are paid while learning. Apprentices come out of the program debt free and ready to work with portable credentials. It is a great way to start a career. For employers, the benefit is they can train apprentices on their specific equipment, with their tools and to their company’s culture for minimal cost. Apprentices also have a 97% retention rate. It’s a great way for an employer to take anyone and make them a BMET while demonstrating they are training new BMETs to nationally set minimum standards and competencies set by AAMI. With the apprenticeship model, now everyone, regardless of economic background, can become a BMET.
Seibert: An apprenticeship provides a clear pathway to a career. It gives the apprentice an education and hands-on experience along with income. When an apprentice finishes their program, they are provided a certified credential that is recognized most anywhere.
Woods: An apprenticeship allows a person to earn while they learn. At ReNew Biomedical, our apprentices attend classes while on the clock and, most importantly, learn from their fellow technicians on the workbench. This on-the-job training, in my opinion, is significantly more valuable than any classroom training. Primarily, because of this hands-on experience, our apprentices are already working independently in the field.
Q: What else do you think TechNation readers need to know about these topics?
Gonzales: Without the strong role models and leaders in our industry, apprenticeship programs and internships would not be possible. From my perspective, as the president of the College of Biomedical Equipment Technology, we are indebted to those in the field willing to put some skin in the game and work with newly minted or aspiring technicians seeking opportunities. Such an approach is the only way we will be successful in closing the workforce gap.
Griffin: TRIMEDX is deeply invested in creating a positive associate experience including offering many professional, development, and learning opportunities to those interested in the health care industry. TRIMEDX offers an additional program outside apprenticeships and internships. We invest an average of $8 million annually in technical training for our associates. Each biomed technician participates in ongoing technician training and has access to our TRIMEDX Tech Plus One entry-level technician mentoring program and our Manager Plus One management development program. We pair experienced professionals with new talent to help them learn the ins and outs of the field from veteran professionals. With this, we can build on our great technicians’ work and insights, while providing continuous learning opportunities.
Horn: Everyone working in the HTM industry is aware of the shortage of technicians. With about half of all HTM professionals now over the age of 50, the problem is going to get worse as more in the field retire. The only long-term solution is to make sure the industry is bringing in new BMET recruits to replace those that are leaving. BMET schools in the U.S. aren’t graduating enough people annually to keep up with demand. I strongly urge hospitals and service organizations to look into the AAMI BMET apprenticeship program as a viable source for recruiting new BMETs who will be loyal to your organization. While there is some work involved with training the BMET apprentices, it’s better than being short-staffed and doing 2-3 people’s jobs with no relief in sight.
Kerwin: Sometimes, though it’s not often said, it’s easier to get your foot in the door by participating in an internship or apprenticeship. Though there are no doubt costs and sacrifices, they offer a path forward.
McGeary: AAMI has over 400 folks across the country that want to be a BMET apprentice. Currently, AAMI does not have enough employer partners to place all these folks. The apprenticeship can be completed for about $3,000 an apprentice plus the apprentice’s 40-hour a week salary. If you are looking for entry level BMETs, that you are willing to train through the BMET apprenticeship, AAMI has the pipeline to help you. Please email HTM@aami.org for more information.
Seibert: I think an apprenticeship is a great option for those who know what they want to do and want to get working in their field of choice right away. It can provide a steady income without all the college debt. We are already starting to see a shortage of BMETs throughout the country. Here at Elite Biomedical Solutions, we have proudly partnered with AAMI and their BMET apprenticeship program to help mitigate this shortage. Along with the AAMI program, we also offer a weeklong class for new BMETs. It’s a fun, hands-on class worth 30 CEUs through AAMI Credentials Institute designed to help new BMETs acquire the knowledge and confidence needed to start a successful career.
Woods: Healthcare technology is changing daily and so are the people who care for the machinery. Pick a program that offers a supportive team environment, quality classroom materials and hands-on instruction. Ask to train under biomeds who follow OEM guidelines and double-check their work for accuracy. You will be able to tell which mentors take the most pride in their work by how they organize their workspace and seek to gain product knowledge through manufacturer training opportunities. ReNew Biomedical has been a strong supporter of slow and steady training instruction alongside Department of Labor recognized Journeyman and supportive management. Always remember that a healthy learning environment produces the most qualified and respected technicians.