A new model to estimate the appropriate staff for a clinical engineering department.

This study points out that the Clinical Engineering Department (CED) can provide expertise for the improvement of healthcare services if the size of the CED is appropriately determined; that is when the number of engineers, technicians and administrative staff is suitable for the activities that they are intended to carry out and for the amount of equipment they must manage. The paper presents a simple and flexible model where the staff is estimated according to the activities that need to be carried out by the CED and according to the amount of biomedical equipment being managed. Several examples of application and comparisons with the results provided by other models are reported and discussed.