Could OEMs biomedical technical
training programs become better?
By Gregory Ward
As a Biomedical Engineering manager, we
often get insight into information that is not
made readily available to the entire industry,
some of which is confidential, proprietary, and
facility specific. For the purposes of this article, I
am referring to Capital Equipment budgets,
biomedical engineering training budgets, how
our healthcare organization can get the best
Return on Investment (ROI) as possible. I can’t
tell you, how many times, I have sat in a Capital
Equipment Subcommittee meeting and been
asked by the committee chair, “Can we put that
purchase off for another year?” Not wanting to
rock the boat, I reluctantly yield to the
committee. On the other hand, I also see new
purchases pushed through these committees to
replace older equipment that is functioning just
fine. In fact, we always have the option of
producing detailed reports showing up-time and
mean-time-between-failures
to
justify
replacement of problematic devices. However, if
the dollars are not there, they are simply not
there. As result, OEMs need to design better
biomedical technical training programs or we
should redesign our own. As an example, I
have chosen the Medivator DSD 201
Endoscopic reprocessor for this article.
Medivators DSD 201 Endoscopic
Reprocessor
Study the above picture for a minute, and
you will see that this unit is designed for ease of
operation for the operator, as it should be.
However, a training unit could be developed, to
ease the pain of learning the unit; so watch as
we design one.
These units are a work horse in our industry;
factory training is available as well as technical
support from the factory. The Medivators factory
training is one of the best that I have attended
just for the record, the training staff is fantastic.
While at Medivators you receive an ample
amount of education that helps you to
understand the clinical staff’s job as well as
learn a great foundation to the introduction to
Sterilization and High disinfectant’s. You’ll also
spend a great deal of time learning how to use
the schematics to troubleshoot as well as
service menu options you can access to assist
you in troubleshooting. You’ll learn how to do
the PM on this unit, which has gotten easier and
quicker with the newest manifold upgrade.
I started maintaining these units before I
attended training, it was then that I noticed how
much time was spent taking them apart and
then reassembling the unit to repair, replace, or
test a component.
Medivators DSD 201 Endoscopic
Reprocessor Training Unit
I decided to start a new project earlier this
year, I wanted to redesign the Medivators DSD
201 into a different configuration. I designed a
training unit that was designed specifically for
the biomedical engineer who would be