Educational curriculums are designed by a method that is known in education circles as a Developing a Curriculum (DACUM) process. This process engages professionals in a chosen field to guide the college on what skills must be taught to ensure successful graduates. Caldwell Community College, for instance, employed the DACUM process to lay out the BMET curriculum almost 30 years ago.

Although this process was completed long before I began my teaching career, it did leave me with a skills profile matrix. This matrix listed the necessary job skills and which class would teach each skill. I used this profile for several years to obtain input from advisory boards and professionals in the field in hopes of keeping the program current. After about three years, I noticed a trend in the information I was receiving about the skills profile. All the input I received simply added new skills; not once did I get a consensus about a skill set that was no longer needed by a BMET.

Old Meets New
In 1964, Bob Dylan named his third studio album, “The Times They Are A-Changin” – a moniker that perfectly applies to biomedical equipment technicians in 2010. After all, with the rapid technological advancements in today’s world of healthcare, nothing could ring truer than the name of this album. However, despite all the advancements in technology, much of healthcare has remained the same, such as anatomy and physiology and chemistry. This simple fact keeps every biomedical equipment technician striving for a balance of old and new. As an educator in this field, I also find myself striving for the correct balance of old and new.

To keep a BMET program or any educational program current, educators rely on the information and advice given by professionals who work in the industry. To ensure competent and high-quality graduates enter their field, these professionals give their time and energy to the educational institution – and, as an educator, I’m deeply grateful for that input. The problem lies in the fact that BMETs today need increasingly more skills, but educators still only have a finite amount of time to teach these skills. When I began my teaching career after years of working as a hospital BMET and a field-service engineer for an OEM, it became apparent that I would always be searching for the correct balance of old and new.

I’m confident that everyone would agree that a BMET must have a basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology, electronics, medical instrumentation, and electrical safety concepts to ensure the highest level of patient care. In the early ’80s, I received an excellent education in all of these areas, but not once in two years did I ever hear the words, “customer service,” “benchmarking,” “evidence-based maintenance,” etc. So, the struggle for the correct balance of new information and old continues.

Technological Innovation
Probably the biggest area of new information BMETs must possess today is in the networking or IT arena. BMET educational programs must teach these new technologies, but they will always come at the expense of a different technology or skill set. So, as the times change, the education programs that serve the industry must also change.

Here at Caldwell, we have implemented several classes into the program from the Cisco Academy to provide our graduates with new skills required by the biomedical industry. As the struggle continues to provide up-to-date information that a technician must possess to be successful, we must be mindful of all the information that must be taught that doesn’t come from new technologies.

As previously mentioned, a BMET must have basic knowledge in electronics, chemistry, physics, communications, safety and instrumentation. Thanks to the ever-increasing advancements in technology and healthcare, BMETs must now possess even more skills. However, because of this, striking the perfect balance between teaching the new technologies and teaching the fundamentals of this career field continues to be a challenge.

So, how does one find the right balance between teaching the fundamentals and teaching the newer technologies? It is my hope that, thanks to the tools provided by TechNation, the communication between working BMETs and educators will increase to provide better-qualified BMETs in the future. After all, the times truly are a-changin’.