By Jim Fedele
In my opinion, biomed techs endure a lot of change throughout their careers from regulation to their reporting structure. For me, there has never been a time where change wasn’t occurring. Recently, in one of my volunteer roles, I had the opportunity to hire a new CEO for our credit union. The experience made me realize how special biomeds are in fulfilling their duties in the face of ever-changing conditions. I would like to share that experience with you to illustrate the dedication we all have for our customers and patients.
I am the president of the board of directors for one of our local credit unions. I needed to hire a new CEO because the previous one decided to move on to a bigger credit union to expand her career. It was a move that I was a little disappointed with but, ultimately, I understood. It was a great growth opportunity for her. We posted the job and sifted through numerous applications. We found two applicants we felt would fit our organization.
The first interviewed candidate was professional and met our requirements. The second candidate was very impressive. He was enthusiastic, had experience doing all the things we wanted to do and was very successful in his present position. So much so, I was worried he was too good to be true. I asked him why he wanted to leave given all he had accomplished at his present company. He looked at me squarely in the eyes and said, “Culture.” He explained how the leadership at his company had abandoned customer service due to financial pressures and thus made decisions that would ultimately hurt the organization in the long term. He told me that they were already losing customers and he had lost his trust and loyalty to the company. He was sad about that fact and knew it was best for him to move on. We offered him the job that day.
This experience made me think about how resilient biomed techs are at dealing with change, specifically culture and leadership. My observation has been that biomed departments report to many different leaders in their facilities, from the facilities director to the CIO and everyone in between. They also endure company changes. Sometimes a facility decides to go from an in-house program to an ISO (or vice versa) or from one ISO to another ISO. Even the biomeds that work for the OEM get passed around to different vice presidents in the company. If you have spent any time in the industry, there is a good chance you have been passed around to different leaders and companies like a hot potato. Often, decisions about the biomed program are made by people who have very little understanding of what we do and are disconnected from the positive and negative impact of that decision. The biomed techs are the faceless victims of someone’s better way to run the program. All this changing would make one think the turnover ratio in our industry is very high. It is not. Many techs I know have been at their hospitals 15-30 years.
I think what makes the biomed so special is, no matter who they report to or work for, their core values of ensuring medical equipment works correctly and safely does not change. In the face of leadership instability and organizational culture change, the biomed manages to ensure that the patients being treated at their facilities do not suffer the consequences. Health care always seems to be under great financial pressure – although it feels like it is worse today. This triggers leaders to try anything to improve the bottom line. I feel the decisions that affect biomeds directly are never negatively transferred to patient care. As biomeds effectively insulate our most vulnerable from being victims of a solely financial decision or poor company morale.
I am not saying that all changes are negative; some changes are good and necessary. An inefficiently run program or a greedy OEM/ISO program needs to be changed to keep the hospital operating. My point is that the instability in leadership that many biomeds endure is never a factor in the product that gets to the patient. That can’t be said about many other industries.
Even during a global pandemic, biomeds continue to shine by creating solutions to assist clinicians in caring for the sick. The stories are numerous, and every one of them makes me proud to be a biomed.
Jim Fedele, CBET, is the senior director of clinical engineering for UPMC. He manages six Susquehanna Health hospitals. He has 30 years of HTM experience and has worked for multiple service organizations. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of TechNation or MD Publishing.
