Characterization of the Clinical Engineering Sector in Hospitals Located in Cities with Telephone Area Code 11
The main mission of Clinical Engineering is to take care of the medical technology life cicle in the hospital. The Clinical Engineering sector inserted within a hospital takes care of many issues from planning the acquisition of equipment to its disposal at an appropriate destination in accordance with current legislation. Even within hospital institutions, the work of Clinical Engineering is still little known. Although Clinical Engineering professionals have been working for at least forty years in Brazil, the profession of Clinical Engineer is still not regulated, therefore, there is no definition of which professional can carry out this activity and what their duties are. In this scenario, hospitals lose resources and quality of the technology based services. The proposal of this work focuses on the characterization of the Clinical Engineering sectors in 135 hospitals delimited by the perimeter of the telephone dialling code 11, covering 64 cities from the state of São Paulo. These hospitals were selected through the Cadastro Nacional de Estabelecimento de Saúde (CNES). The selected hospitals will be invited to participate in a quantitative research on a voluntary basis, using an electronic form, remotely following the guidelines and good practices of the 'Research Ethics Committee' (CEP). The purpose is to understand how the Clinical Engineering sector works and who participates in the care of the medical equipment within the hospital environment, understand the dynamics, flows and professionals involved and the main difficulties related to the acquisition and disposal of medical equipment.