CEMC Develops Standardized Job Descriptions
AAMI’s Clinical Engineering Management Committee (CEMC) has established a set of standardized job descriptions for a variety of positions in the clinical engineering field.
The job descriptions are primarily designed for clinical engineering managers to use as a resource or to adopt, but the descriptions may also be useful for individuals who are interested in entering or moving up within the field.
“As we encourage young men and women to enter into the field of medical equipment repair, there needs to be a clearly defined career ladder in place,” says Dean Phillips, director of clinical engineering for Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, TX.“ With the development of these job descriptions we can achieve this.
“Establishing a career ladder is also a motivational tool,” says Phillips. “As a technician it will let you know exactly what you need to accomplish to ready yourself for a promotion.”
To develop the job descriptions, the CEMC solicited job descriptions from facilities of various sizes and types across the United States. From these, the committee pulled common language and set baselines for educational requirements, years of experience, responsibilities, etc., for each position, and crafted the standardized descriptions.
According to Caroline Campbell, CCE, director of clinical engineering with TriMedx, ongoing change in the field has increased the need for standardized job descriptions.
“Personnel management is a continuum of activity that must be constantly refreshed and recycled,” says Campbell, who helped develop the job descriptions. “Periodic review of the job description facilitates inclusion of educational and experiential requirements that support new essential activity elements for a particular position. These changes in essential activity elements are in turn driven by changes in healthcare technology.
“For example, we are all aware that with increasing frequency medical equipment is networked so that information can be included in the electronic patient record,” Campbell notes. “Support of that networked equipment requires new knowledge and skill sets that should be folded into a job description.”
The job descriptions will be included on AAMI’s newly updated 2008 Career Moves CD, which is described in this issue of AAMI News. In addition, all AAMI members can access and download the job descriptions on the Clinical Engineering Management page at www.aami.org/cemc.
For nearly 20 years, the CEMC — which is chaired by Bob Stiefel, CCE, director of clinical engineering at the University of Maryland Medical System — has played an important role in advancing the professional interests of clinical engineers and promoting the importance of the field.