BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING SUMMER INTERSHIP by Min Q Lee

I am a final year student studying bioengineering at the University of Sheffield. Last summer, I went back to my home country, Malaysia, where I did a two months internship in the Sunway Medical Centre, a hospital in Selangor.

The Sunway Medical Centre is considered to be one of the best private hospitals in Malaysia. Personally, it was such a great experience to work hands on at a hospital. The engineers in the hospital have to maintain over 5,000 medical devices that range from suction regulators, defibrillators, dialysis machines to CT scanners. There are so many benefits to doing an internship within a hospital - during the internship, I also got to see how the doctors and nurses use the machines when treating patients. I gained a lot of work experience and knowledge as a biomedical engineer.

The aim of every biomedical engineer is to ensure that all the medical devices in the hospital are in perfect working order. This is incredibly important as a failure in any of the devices could cause complications and may even be fatal to patients. My tasks during my two months internship was to perform PPM (Planned and preventive maintenance) services and also to solve/repair breakdown machines in the hospital.

Every medical device has its PPM check, some take place every 6 months and for some it is annually. Under the supervision of my manager, I performed several checks on various devices to ensure they were in good working order.  For machines requiring electricity, an EST (Electric Safety Test) was performed as well. Some of the machines were not in perfect condition and I would observe and repeat the actions of senior members of staff. They would initially assess the conditions of the machines and then make an appropriate decision. The pictures show me in action, repairing various devices.

    

The two months internship was excellent and provided me with a great  insight into what it’s like to work in the medical field.  In addition to this it was also a great opportunity to put my engineering knowledge into use.  For those of you that have not had an opportunity to get an internship, don’t worry,  it is never too late to start so go ahead and apply now!