A sustainability evaluation of a biomedical technician training program in Honduras

Engineering World Health (EWH) developed and executed a unique model to train biomedical technicians (BMET) in Rwanda, Honduras, and Cambodia. This model significantly decreased out-of-service equipment, one to two years after the training’s initiation, when comparing hospitals with EWH trained BMET...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health and technology 2018-09, Vol.8 (4), p.291-300
Main Authors: Emmerling, Dane, Sholar, Paige W., Malkin, Robert A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accreditation
Biological and Medical Physics
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Biomedicine
Biophysics
Computational Biology/Bioinformatics
Continuing education
Control equipment
Curricula
Engineering
Funding
Hospitals
Infrastructure
Interviews
Managerial skills
Mathematics education
Medical equipment
Medicine/Public Health
Original Paper
Preventive maintenance
Professional development
R & D/Technology Policy
Science education
Students
Sustainability
Technicians
Training
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Summary:Engineering World Health (EWH) developed and executed a unique model to train biomedical technicians (BMET) in Rwanda, Honduras, and Cambodia. This model significantly decreased out-of-service equipment, one to two years after the training’s initiation, when comparing hospitals with EWH trained BMETs to similar hospitals with BMETs without EWH training [1–4]. Despite this model’s past evidence of impact, no study has shown evidence for sustained impact and continued delivery of services after the termination of funding. Here, one year after external funding ended for the EWH Honduras program, the model’s sustainability was assessed using qualitative interviews guided by an established sustainability framework and quantitative measures of continued impact on out-of-service rates of medical equipment. Interviews found the program, institutionalized within a technical training college, was strongly sustainable in each domain of an established sustainability framework. Additionally, there was evidence of continuing production of benefits to the health system. Technicians whose training through EWH had ended two years earlier had 35.37% less out-of-service equipment compared to similarly sized control hospitals, demonstrating continued impact of training ( p  
ISSN:2190-7188
2190-7196
DOI:10.1007/s12553-018-0241-7