I have been a medical equipment repairer for over 10 years now. I suppose the technical term for us is "biomedical equipment technicians" but the job description is exactly the same: we fix and refurbish medical equipment. After graduating from college, I knew that I wanted to get into this field. I was always fascinated by the mechanical nature of machines and I didn’t really want to be an engineer so I found a happy medium with this job. I took the proper courses, got an AA degree and then went through some training courses that officially certified me for medical equipment repair.
Don’t be fooled by the way we look; repairing medical equipment requires a high level of skill and attention to detail. We have our own arsenal of tools that are typically smaller than your pinky finger. These precision instruments help us get around those tiniest gears that are manufactured within the milimeter of design specifications. The rest of the time, we are fiddling with the sophisticated electronic controls that are revealed only after opening the medical equipment.
We are trained to work on all of the medical machines out there. For instance, if you ask any medical equipment repairer, he or she will probably tell you that they know all about defibrillators, EKG machines, medical imaging equipment and electric wheelchairs. An important factor to consider is the environment in which we are working in. Alot of us are independent contractors who are employed for specific tasks and when a hospital calls on us, we will have to go directly to the room in which the medical equipment is. Ofteintimes, it is still being used when we are fixing it. This is why it is important that we have to take great care in not disturbing the patients.
Luckily for anyone looking to go into the medical equipment repair field, the job market for this career is projected to increase 22 percent between 2006 and 2016. This increase is much faster than the average fo all of the occupations because medical services are rather inelastic when concerned with the economy. Directly connected to the sale of medical equipment, medical equipment repair is invaluable to healthcare. Where there are people who need to be healthy, there will be medical equipment repairers.
