Career paths are becoming more varied and more complicated. Long-term employment with a single employer is no longer a likely scenario. Career development experts estimate that today's worker is likely to make five or six job changes and even a career change or two during a professional career likely to be years longer than that of the previous generation.
Clinical engineers and biomedical equipment technicians are not exempt from today's career realities. Career management consultant Tom Morris, Morris Associates, Washington, DC, explains, "Change has been happening faster in health care than in any other economic sector."
Is
Your Career Headed in the Right Direction? |
An informal BI&T survey of employers and biomedical professionals who are successfully navigating today's career opportunities reveals patterns and guidance for others looking to keep their own careers moving.
The clinical engineers and biomedical equipment technicians interviewed for this article are either self-employed, employed by health care systems, work in independent service, or for medical device manufacturers. Their resumes include field service, academia, military backgrounds, and employment outside of health care. They share four characteristics: (1) pursuit of education, training and certification; (2) an uncommon commitment to identifying perceived weaknesses and strengthening them; (3) creative thinking and flexibility with regard to their career paths; and (4) attention to their own intuitive, personal career imperatives.
1.
"Go to School. Never Stop Learning."
An employer looking for evidence of desire and hard work will usually
look first at professional development. What is the employee doing
to bring more value to the organization? Employers look at academic
qualifications and course work, certifications, and skills development.
Not once but three times, Michael Carver, MS, MBA, CBET, CCE, Vice President of Premier's 500-person Clinical Technology Services group, has combined career responsibilities with academic training. First, he completed a B.S., returned for an MBA, and then went back again for an MS in Engineering.
Don Reiter, CBET, combines full-time duties as General Manager, Manufacturing and Service Operations for Mediq PRN with MBA course work. Like Carver, he is a major employer of BMETs whose advice is often sought. It is always the same: "Work hard. Go to school. Never stop learning."
Carver chairs the International Certification Commission for Clinical Engineering and Biomedical Technology (ICC), and Reiter is chair of the U.S. Board of Examiners for Biomedical Equipment Technicians. They are mystified that so few people make the commitment to become certified.
"Certification," Reiter believes, "is a foundation on which a BMET can build and develop." If you are eligible for certification but choose not to be certified, Reiter wonders, "how can you claim that you have the desire and willingness to work that employers are looking for?"
2.
Identify and Strengthen Weaknesses
It takes a conscious effort to identify and strengthen personal
weaknesses. Like it or not, weaknesses can have a great impact on
career growth. Improving strengths is natural; improving weaknesses
is not. One important weakness to look for is in the area of "people
skills." Career expert Tom Morris looks at the issue in general
terms. "A technical worker prefers to work with things as opposed
to people or ideas, but career advancement demands development in
all three areas."
Based on his experience managing biomedical equipment professionals for the Air Force and for Premier, Michael Carver sees "people skills" as an area of potential vulnerability for biomedical equipment technicians. "My experience tells me it's been the people skills that hold technical people back. Are you a good listener? Do you have a need to be right all the time?" Job interviews that fail to yield offers or expected promotions that do not materialize should motivate any biomedical professional to look hard at people skills as an area for improvement.
Those who would expand their influence and grow their salaries as managers are likely to have skill deficits in finance and marketing. Interpersonal skills will prove even more important on the managerial track than on a technical track. Don Reiter singles out communication skills for special emphasis. "As a practical matter," he says, "those who cannot communicate their value are going to be at a disadvantage when compared with others who are better communicators." Speaking, writing, and presenting skills can be extremely rewarding, particularly in a field like biomedical engineering, where these abilities are in relatively short supply.
3. Think Out of the Box and Into the Future
A career-minded professional who strengthens his or her own weaknesses and has the right skills and credentials might still be limited by conventional thinking about his or her roles or opportunities. Out-of-the-box thinking questions assumptions. That is why it is often easier to recognize out- of- the- box thinking than to actually do it on your own behalf. Your neighbor's assumptions might be obvious at a glance, whereas your own are automatic and unchallenged. Successful biomedical professionals keep their careers moving by challenging their own assumptions and seeing possibilities where others see none. Here are some examples of individuals who have reaped career dividends by challenging common assumptions.
Who says a BMET works in a hospital?
Don Trombatore, CBET, is the Global Biomedical Marketing Liaison for GE Marquette Medical Systems (Milwaukee, WI). His responsibilities range from product design to sales. Design engineers trust his judgment and salespeople see him as a powerful and persuasive ally.
Trombatore got his start with an associates degree in electronics. He enjoyed his first job providing quality control for the steel industry, but he considered health care more layoff-proof.
His experience working as a biomedical equipment technician taught him that the BMET was an extremely important customer for medical equipment. "Only a biomedical professional understands the technology and the clinical perspective," he says. When health care systems buy monitoring equipment, the committees making the decisions can be pretty large." Yet there comes a point when the biomedical professional becomes the critical player.
"This doesn't
mean that a BMET is the major decision maker", Trombatore notes,
"but it does mean that he or she can suggest that the field
be narrowed from ten vendors to two."
When it comes time to visit GE Marquette Medical Systems and make
a purchase decision, a biomedical professional will nearly always
be included as part of a health care institution's visit-a trend
that Trombatore believes most certainly will continue. "Health
care institutions know they can't make a mistake, especially with
decisions more and more likely to affect systems as opposed to single
institutions."
Who says that biomedical engineering has to be a cost center?
Eric Rosow, MS, directs the biomedical engineering department at Hartford Hospital. His department is organized into five clusters: technology management, technology assessment, education, research and development, and shared services. The last two are positioned to generate revenue.
The R&D cluster currently holds four patents and soon will generate revenue through royalties, licensing, and technology transfers. Shared services clients include three hospitals and 67 other health care sites.
Given the convergence of medical and information technologies, Rosow intends for his biomedical engineering department "to continue to work with its customers to ensure that they know what today's technology can do, and, where appropriate, to implement and support that technology." Rosow's positioning and information technology know-how are driving the revenue that will be used to improve his department's bottom line--perhaps even transforming it ultimately from a cost center to a profit center.
Who says a BMET cannot himself be a CEO?
Michael Balakonis, CBET, launched his own company, MedEquip Biomedical (Miami, FL) with a phone book filled with names of colleagues from the local biomedical society and an absolute certainty a need existed that he could fulfill. Today he has 12 employees and a rapidly expanding product line of preowned monitoring equipment and service parts.
Balakonis offers encouragement to fellow biomedical equipment technicians who would be entrepreneurs. "Once you identify a business need, you will find that there is more help than you ever imagined through the Small Business Administration and from local government and nonprofit organizations."
Who says a clinical engineer starting a new job needs to be paid a salary?
Eben Kermit, MS, CCE, worked 11 years in hospitals, first with Veterans Administration hospitals and later at Stanford University. When he left Stanford, he did not know where he was going. "Leaving one job without a new position is not for everybody," Kermit says, "but there's no question the uncertainty focuses your thinking." What Kermit did know was that he wanted to take his engineering talents to a startup company that was doing exciting work. The opportunity to improve patient care directly was the ultimate prize.
Intense networking led him to two companies he believed in enough to work for a time without a salary. Today, at Radio Therapeutics (Sunnyvale, CA), he is one of 30 employees, and as a result of the company's success, he is no longer engineering its first product but training customers on how to use it.
4. Time for New Directions? You Be the Judge
The career path of Michael Toll, PhD, PE, CCE, is hardly typical, but it is instructive. Toll has navigated his career guided by his own sense of when he is growing and when he is not. Although he started his career in academia, he has not been shy about shifting direction
Today he is quality assurance manager for Visible Genetics Inc. (Etobicoke, Ontario, CA). Along the way, he had satisfying stints as a clinical engineering consultant and director of clinical engineering. Leaving a secure, tenured teaching assignment was hardly an obvious choice, but in Toll's view, it made perfect sense. "I made the move from the university to the hospital because I saw myself doing the same things over and over. I didn't want to do the same things. I wanted the opportunity to do new things."
As a professor, Toll served as a consultant in hospitals. "I made recommendations but was frustrated when they weren't followed. In the hospital, I began to sense the constraints and the politics that impact decision making.
"Clinical engineering is important in a hospital but, of course, it's not primary, nor should it be," he said. "It doesn't make a difference to administrators if clinical engineering is handled inhouse or outsourced. Industry is more focused on what it wants to do: produce innovative products and gain market share."
The pressure and the rewards of the manufacturing setting are what feel right to Toll today. "In the corporate world, the success or failure of the organization depends on making schedules," he says.
Ask Toll about the future and his laugh suggests that he understands that actively managing his career is a continuing process. "Figuring out who you are and what you want to do is, in some respects, endless,"he notes.
Summary
Talking
to employers and successful biomedical professionals reveals a profile
of traits in common. Successful biomedical professionals exhibit
a desire to excel and a willingness to work hard. They push beyond
personal comfort zones to identify weaknesses and build skills that
may not come easily. Whether on the job or in the classroom, they
are always learning. Short-term sacrifices are endured for the long-term
payoffs provided by academic degrees and certification. Successful
biomedical professionals challenge assumptions, especially their
own, in order to advance their careers. When it comes to important
career decisions, they solicit advice and do research. Ultimately,
however, the decisions they make must be in accord with their own
internal guidance systems.
Career management is important to get right. Aside from the financial security and emotional satisfaction provided by career choices, there is the practical matter that, in a sense, the journey lasts a lifetime.
Source: Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology: Volume 34/Number 1: January/February 2000, p. 25-28