This article has been penned down to knock the board rooms of the higher authorities of Sindh in general and Pakistan in particular, to register a case against undue employment challenges faced by the Biomedical Engineers right after graduation.
The Biomedical Engineers of Sindh are facing tremendous cases of joblessness and feel betrayed and disappointed by complete failure of the Pakistan Engineering Council in addressing grievances regarding possible short-term internship based employment prospects on contractual basis with the capacity to entertain extended long-term performance-based opportunities for the possible career growth in this magnificent field, promising highest gross income in the other parts of the world owing to a disciplined, corruption-free and merit-based human resource potential extraction mechanism.
Biomedical Engineering is considered one of the top professions in the developed world owing to the latest emerging technological advancements in the field of medicine and industry, thanks to innovation in technology and its implementation. With increasing research prospects in this field, it is expected that Biomedical instrumentation will gain perpetual momentum that ceases to exist. Unlike other countries, Pakistan is facing tribulations in health care delivery. The health system in Pakistan is currently going through several reforms at the federal and provincial level particularly to improve the delivery of health services to the population. Our nation’s health care providers – surgeons, physicians, nurses, and others work hard to provide life-saving and life-improving care to millions of Pakistanis, but the level of quality and efficiency of care varies significantly across the country.
Most of the services provided by Biomedical Engineers in the hospital are assembling, installing, repairing and maintaining machines and instruments. Due to the unavailability of Biomedical Engineers in the hospitals, machines worth millions of rupees are getting wrecked, and hospitals are being converted into graveyards of the equipment. Because of the unavailability of healthcare equipment, the medical staff fails to provide proper medical treatment in government hospitals, so patients have to visit them at private clinics and pay huge fees. Therefore,a suitable and applicable structure is required to bridge the gap between medical technology and patient care in government hospitals.
With growing healthcare awareness andan increase in population and greater affordability for optimized healthcare, the need for qualified Biomedical Engineers is increased in Pakistan. For the sake of optimized healthcare facilities provision at the doorsteps for the people of Pakistan, it is extremely important to inaugurate a foolproof employment policy for the Biomedical Engineers of Pakistan and ensure its unconditional implementation so that human resource potential dealing with Biomedical equipment is available and increasing with regards to the increasing healthcare requirements.
Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Liaquat University of Medical & Health Sciences, and NED University of Engineering and Technology and other public and private universities of Sindh province are offering Biomedical Engineering programs to produce Biomedical Engineering based work function to operate in hospitals and healthcare centers across the province, however, very few of such Engineers are working as gazetted officers in the various tertiary hospital. Approximately four hundred and fifty Biomedical Engineers graduate each year in province Sindh, but unfortunately, only a handful receives employment in the same profession.
In Pakistan, Biomedical Engineers should be employed in universities, industries, hospitals, research centers for education and medical institutions, teaching and government regulatory agencies. The government is requested to start a Biomedical Engineering Regulatory Board and recruit Biomedical Engineers for product testing and safety. Besides establishing safety standards for devices, Biomedical Engineers can provide recommendations and supervision in the selection of medical equipment and they can also manage the performance of the equipment continuously. A well-established hospital cannot offer the quality of healthcare without having the Biomedical Engineering department, particularly hospitals with secondary and tertiary care, because such hospitals are full of medical equipment, instruments, devices, and machinery that can be operated, calibrated and maintained by Biomedical Engineers through the appropriate catalog.
Currently, the status of the Biomedical Engineering field in Pakistan is far from satisfactory. There is no production or manufacturing of Biomedical equipment, machines and instruments at a larger commercial level