Clinical engineering education in the high technology hospital.

The application of high technology in the critical care field has created two potential approaches: (1) development of critical care technicians to coordinate clinical engineering educational support; and (2) modification of the hospital organization to streamline communications between the clinical engineers and those they support. At one university hospital studied from 1978 to 1982, both the use of high technology equipment and the number of critical care technicians approximately doubled. With emphasis on technician coordination of engineering support, the in-service education lectures increased 134%, while the engineering staff and the corrective maintenance workload remained unchanged.