ABSTRACT
In an article in the April 2016 issue of HEJ, we highlighted the current UK shortage of female engineers, focused on some of the reasons for the difficulty in recruiting young women, and considered some of the key steps bodies including professional institutes need to take to address the 'gender gap'. Here, in the first of a series of planned follow-up articles on successful women engineers' careers, HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, talks to Claire Hennessy FIHEEM, who, as head of Operational Estates and Facilities at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is responsible for the smooth day-to-day running of the buildings and plant at four busy hospitals. As she explained, she gained her first engineering experience looking after weaponry in the Royal Navy.
Subject(s)
Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital/history , Career Choice , Female , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Military Personnel/history , United KingdomABSTRACT
The early nineteenth-century asylum in Britain was generally sited upon a hill with wide-ranging rural views, surrounded by agricultural land, gardens and landscaped grounds. A number of historians have discussed the role of these features as places for patients to partake in recreation, exercise and work. This paper will add to this literature by exploring the possibility that, alongside this active participation and interaction, the passive experience of viewing the landscape and the location of the asylum within a rural setting were also expected to have a therapeutic role.
Subject(s)
Architecture/history , Esthetics/history , Gardening/history , Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital/history , Mental Disorders/history , Environment , History, 19th Century , Humans , Mental Disorders/therapy , Mental Health Services/history , Recreation/history , Religion/history , Rural Health Services/history , United KingdomSubject(s)
Cross Infection/prevention & control , Infection Control/history , Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital/history , Cross Infection/history , Decontamination , History, 20th Century , Infection Control/methods , Maintenance and Engineering, Hospital/methods , Sterilization , United KingdomABSTRACT
This feature article presents an overview of how the biomedical equipment technology field developed. It begins with some of the early medical equipment breakthroughs, such as the discovery of X rays. The article then traces the key role of the military in electronic technology design, leading to the concept of specially trained individuals to maintain medical equipment. The Technical Education Research Center is discussed, along with the evolution of BMET schools. Formal BMET education had a strong advocate in Ralph Nader, whose concerns about electrical safety in hospitals supported the need for trained technicians to test medical equipment. BMET certification, BMET careers, and Clinical Engineering are discussed. The article concludes with some speculation on healthcare reform and its possible effect on the biomedical equipment profession.
