By Jannah Shaffie
Last summer, I travelled back to my home country,
Malaysia. During my 3 months summer
break, I worked for the Faber Company for one and a half months. The company
generally maintained facilities, usually engineering-related, required by local
governmental hospitals. There were few main engineering departments, like
mechanical, electrical, civil and one that I’m working in, the biomedical
department. I worked in one of the Faber regional offices in Ipoh (the capital
city of the Perak district) which maintained facilities in the biggest hospital
in the area called Raja Permaisuri Bainun Hospital.
Generally,
there were few things I did during my internship. One the main things was to
learn about biomedical machines, with hand on experience. On my first day as an
intern, I was given a timetable with the sub-departmental visit schedule. There
were many sub departments, each having its own members and machine specialists.
Amongst the units were, hemodialysis, imaging, laboratory, operational theater
(OT), ICU, and ‘general’ (represent all areas other than mentioned former) which
cover machines from various departments like daily clinic e.g. eye clinic,
neonatal wards, casualty, maternity hall, and many more. I also learned about a
testing and commissioning (TnC) process which was generally a simulation of purchased
product conducted by the vendor and the contract-signing between the vendor and
the hospital officers. On top of that, I was taught how to do the annual
machine checkup called PPM which stood for Plan Preventive Measurement. PPM
generally included the Electric Safety Test (EST), calibration (applicable on
some machines), physical cleaning, and other tasks. In order to ensure longer
lifespans of machines, PPM was considered vital, apart from ensuring the
machines were safe to be used onto patients. Besides, I also learned how to do
asset filing which was important to ensure governmental assets data was well
documented and easily retrieved.
Light Slit |
During
the early phase of my internship, I did feel a bit nervous and anxious.
Fortunately, the staff there were very nice, pleasant and generous in sharing
their expertise and knowledge. My first sub departmental visit was to the hemodialysis
(HD) center. For three days, I would visit the HD outpatient’s center at the
hospital learning on HD machines. The HD specialist also taught me the whole
support system to the HD center including the RO water system which supply the
fundamental RO water to the HD machines all over the ward. Apart from that, he
also showed me an alternative to HD as kidney failure therapy, the peritoneal
dialysis machine and set up. After that, I visited the imaging department where
I was introduced to the X-ray machines, fluoroscopy, CT scan, MRI and mammogram.
The specialist also explained on the safety aspects of the machines operation
and on the safety design of the room itself (e.g. presence of ferrous detector
at the entrance of MRI room).
Soon after that,
I followed another departmental visit which was the ‘general’. During this time
I had the chance to see and learn about the light slit machine (a normal eye
checking device in every eye clinic) and OCT which stands for Optical Coherence
Tomography, at the eye clinic. Besides, I also had the chance to visit the
casualty or emergency section, where all emergency cases were first diagnosed
and treated upon arrival at the hospital before they were sent to wards and the
ICU. I was later brought to the neonatal ward to check on the incubators on a
floor full of babies, mature and premature. I was also introduced to the camera
devices used during operations i.e. laparoscope and telescope. The laparoscope,
a long wire-like cable, was attached to the monitor, light machine (to produce
light) and camera processor. Each cable required proper use and care since the
fibre glass cable was susceptible to break and the camera was very sensitive to
scratches. Getting the experience of watching surgery in the maternity wing was
definitely something I will not forget.
MRI Room |
My next departmental visit was to the
operational theatre (OT). The procedure of getting into the OT was rather
strict with only permissible individuals i.e. doctors and working nurses,
allowed in. That’s why getting the opportunity to visit OT was something that I
really appreciated. The OT was generally the place where you’d get to see many
complex biomedical machines apart from the ICU. In there, I was introduced to
the ventilator, operational table, LED surgical light, electrosurgical unit
(ESU) used for slicing open tissue, large microscope to assist miniature
operations, laparoscope and many more! Usually, machines common to other
departments were also readily available in the OT i.e. hemodialysis, ultrasound
and mobile x ray machines. Later, I was escorted to the ICU department. In
there, lots of biomedical machines were attached to only one patient proving
how crucial the machines are to help them stay alive. There were a great number
of ventilator machines in ICU due to its vitality for the patients in the
departments.
The practical experience will definitely
serve as a stepping stone for my career with all the skills and values I
learned there. It was such a great feeling to work on the machines that I had
learned about in class, plus getting to know many others that I had never
encountered. Also, there were definitely many fond memories I made, especially
with my fellow officemates. The days when we had breakfast together, stressed
about to fix machines and laugh at each other’s jokes were some of the
unforgettable memories I will cherish for life.
In a nutshell, doing an internship is definitely
something that I will not regret and I highly encourage all the undergrads out
there to grab the chance to do internship in any company you like, for the priceless
experience that will help you grow gain a lot of new personnel skills. All the
best!
Last day at the biomedical engineering department with officemates. |
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