By Roger A. Bowles, MS, EdD, CBET
During casual conversations on the Expo floor, as well as in numerous educational sessions, one message seemed clear at June’s AAMI 2017 Annual Conference in Austin, Texas: the looming shortage of qualified medical equipment service professionals. In fact, one presenter at AAMI 2017 stated that more than 25% of current technicians will be retiring in the next four years and more than 55% will be retiring in the next 14 years.
Looking around, it isn’t hard to see the graying of the HTM population—a category I certainly fall into. And with the growing number of calls I’ve gotten from employers searching for entry-level technicians lately, I’m not sure the shortage isn’t already here.
Add the shortage of technicians to the decreasing number of students coming into the field and the program closures around the country, and you have a huge problem. In my opinion, more effort to recruit high-school-age students would seem to be the answer.
Last year, our program visited more than 40 high schools, career events, and job fairs. Enrollment in our program is up slightly, but compared to five years ago it’s still about 40 to 50 students below what we would like it to be. Right now, we have about 120 to 130 students overall in our program and graduate 40 to 50 students per year. (Ideally, we would like to stay over 150 students and graduate at least 60 to 70 students per year.)
Further, the average age of our students remains at around 28 to 30, with most of them being career-changers. Few of them came directly from high school.
Every semester, I ask the incoming group of students how they heard about our program and/or career field. And every semester, the overwhelming majority of them say they heard about it through a friend, neighbor, or family member who works as a medical equipment repair professional. Maybe one or two say that they saw us at their high school.
So, clearly, recruiting at high schools hasn’t been our most successful avenue of attracting new students. And that has been the case for all 20 years I have been here. In my opinion, what we need to do is increase students through word of mouth and graduate more of the students we do get through better retention. After all, we often lose some of our students to other programs while they’re on campus.
I’ve asked several of them why they’ve switched to instrumentation, electrical power control, robotics, and related programs. Some say starting pay, of course, but most of them say it’s because they’ve noticed the number of employers recruiting for these programs on campus, as well as the number of employer-provided banners, brochures, and job postings hanging throughout the hallways. They’ve also mentioned how employers are donating equipment to these programs. In other words, they notice how employers are investing in them.
Every week, employer representatives are on campus interviewing and talking to students. Many of them are providing scholarships and sponsorships to students in those programs.
Interestingly enough, at one AAMI presentation, a presenter from a very well-respected HTM program mentioned competing with power-sports programs on-campus. And, just yesterday, I saw a for-profit school’s national recruiting advertisement on television, which highlighted how many sponsored scholarships they were giving to incoming students. This may be key for our industry, also.
Furthermore, I believe that in order to attract more students to our biomedical programs—and graduate more students into the field—three things need to happen:
- We need more scholarships and/or sponsorships from employers recruiting future medical equipment professionals. If our program could offer 20 to 30 scholarships per semester (and not necessarily huge scholarships!) from five to 10 different employers, it would be a good recruiting tool—especially through word of mouth.
- All HTM and biomedical programs need more employers on campus, interviewing and just talking to students, as well as providing banners for the hallways and brochures. That will get students excited about the career field.
- We need more equipment donations. Although our department is fortunate to receive donations, sometimes the equipment is well-used and no longer what the students would see in hospitals. These donations typically come from ISOs and hospitals where our past graduates work—and we are grateful. But wouldn’t it be nice to see OEMs invest more in the future of our industry by providing us with state-of-the art equipment?
Many programs around the country are in state-funded, non-profit schools. Maybe equipment donations and other activities could be tax write-offs? Although OEMs can generally cherry-pick their field-service employees from current hospital-based BMETs, it would seem to me that eventually the shortage of qualified medical equipment repair professionals will have an effect on everyone.
Roger A. Bowles, MS, EdD, CBET, is a professor of biomedical equipment technology at Texas State Technical College in Waco.
I gave my opinion last year for Ms Forsythe-Stephens’ article. I agree local programs, and employers/alumni need to talk to high school students or else civilian HTM programs would be in trouble due to low enrollment, and lose prospective students to the military and 4-year colleges because of their frequent recruitment presence.
However, as a recent graduate, I don’t recommend the HTM field these days due to the saturated job market because of too few employers, and the low number of openings for entry-level positions. I would rather tell high schoolers to look a into another electronics field (Aerospace, semiconductors, telecomm, etc.), join the military, or (With good planning) apply to a 4-year college.
Roger,
I believe the program you provide is of great value to this industry and basically there three ways of entering this field; through a program like yours, from the military or from a similar or closely related existing career. The problems we face today are the shrinking of healthcare facilities, the drain on capital spending due to diminishing reimbursements, and the change in the industry where more and more products are a windows based network devices that reduces the hands on skills of the technicians. Let’s realize that the electronic and technical skills of a BMET today are valued and respected but there is relatively limited component troubleshooting performed today and is more of a module or assembly replacement. I stated several years ago that the BMET should be changed to BMIT due to the network connectivity. The only real problem with that is that IT most commonly has ” business mission” objective where HTM has a “patient Mission” objective.
This is still a healthcare occupation and a person should have the mindset of a healthcare professional.
The article and the two comments, along with Pat Lynch’s article on the profession, present the key if conflicting elements. What is the future of the hospital employee and third party profession, where are there actual open jobs now or soon and in what numbers, and what skills are/will be necessary.
We might also want to remember that connectivity involves connecting actual things that might need service and repair (if the device industry doesn’t freeze everyone out). The network doesn’t touch the patient without an intervening device.
Hi Roger,
It is obvious that the HT field like other fields has gone through major changes in the last 30 plus years from technology perspective to how clinical and non clinical services are delivered. In my view future growth for the traditional repair and PM model is very bleak. The healthcare technology education and service providers have to evolve to meet the new demands from healthcare delivery systems to stay relevant. Hence updating skills needed are essential. Some of the new skills such as IT networks management, risk assessment, project management, equipment planning, home care, human engineering and many more became essential. I wonder the current educational offerings cover these areas? In addition to recruiting new talents schools can contribute to skills development of the current work force. Lean is the mantra for sustenance.
Thanks
Ananth Veeriah
Yesmar Global Solutions LLC
We may be better suited to start a list of employers that would be beneficial to work under as we point new people to the field. I have myself somewhat out of the in house positions, along with many others, due to poor management, bad experiences with certain bottom of the barrel programs, or just lack of pay while management or the ISO soaks up the contract dollars while putting the BMET in tougher situations where they cannot learn. This field needs a great change in leadership in many of these ISOs where they will allow talent to train others and stop vendor abuse along with providing a cost effective program.
Hi Roger it is great to see you contributing to the field still. I was one of your students at Fitzsimons. You wrote a great article by the way. It is a great topic and it’s interesting to see that most comments appear to be from non-wrench turning professionals. I include myself in that group because I am involved with medical device manufacturing and quality and not bench work. In my opinion the connected world and information availability has given many prospective students the knowledge to not choose to be a BMET. The glitz and glamour that was promised in the school back in the day has been exposed for what it truly is. The job is demanding and sometimes monotonous for those that do not enjoy scheduled services. I myself love the unscheduled repairs and customer interaction. The pay across the nation on average is not very impressive, especially in high cost of living areas. The imaging positions are limited so that is not always a way to get more money. The massive overtime route to more cash is a quick trip to burnout city. From my perspective the aging technician population can be attributed to those individuals that got comfortable and were accustomed to stability of employment from their military time. One must be willing to relocate to find opportunities when the positions in their hometown are occupied by lifers. The management route is also fairly limited in terms of opportunities as well but it is an option. I love the field and hope great things for its future. It would be nice to see the large hospital organizations take better care of the field and start to recognize them as much as they recognize the patient care providers. We need more executive representation in the C-Suite too!