Conclusion
The hospital-based clinical engineer is in a unique position to advance patient care
through engineering skills. Engineering is the process of synthesis and design, the creation
of something that was not there before—something that fills a need. The need for
good clinical engineering abounds in today’s health care organizations. The clinical engineer
should not be content with the role so often cast by well-intentioned, but inadequately
informed, fellow health care professionals. Although some engineers think of
device modification and design as merely offshoots of the job of maintaining hospital
medical equipment (a view more in keeping with the education), experience and skills of
an engineer is that analysis and synthesis is the main stem. Caceres (1980) would be
delighted to know that clinical engineering has emerged from the shadows of the distant
repair shop to the bedside where engineering skills can be most effectively applied.