The Profile of Clinical Engineering in Espirito Santo, Brazil

摘要

As a result of high rates of non-operating equipment due to the lack of maintenance and proper training, Clinical Engineering has been growing considerably in Brazil since the 1990s and, therefore, its demand. In the State of Espirito Santo (ES), the reality is different from found in large cities. Because of that, this article has the following purposes: to verify the presence of Clinical Engineers in ES; to analyze the team composition and the presence of predictive and preventive maintenance procedures; and to compare the proportion of CT and MRI equipment in ES with national and international data. For this, data gathering of 97 hospitals registered in the National Registry of Health Establishments was carried out to obtain a list of existing equipment in the places and the way that maintenance service of such equipment is performed, as well as the composition of the team. The results obtained shows most of the general hospitals have outsourced Equipment Maintenance Service and those responsible for Clinical Engineering do not have specialization in the area or a degree in engineering. In addition, there are 0.75 MRI equipment and 0.50 CT for each 500 thousand and 100 thousand inhabitants, respectively, in the Universal Healthcare Service, values below determined by ordinance MS 1101. Thus, these data corroborate the need of increasing the supply and training of professionals in Biomedical Engineering and Clinical Engineering areas to promote additional study in the technological management practices of such equipment.