An Overview of the Postgraduate Courses in Clinical Engineering Offered in Brazil

Abstract

“Clinical Engineering” (EC) is an engineering specialty in which the primary role is to take care of the life cycle of medical equipment. Professional assignments cover activities ranging from planning the incorporation of new devices to managing the maintenance and disposal of systems in an appropriate destination. Engineers working in that field are commonly named Clinical Engineers. The first professionals with dedicated training in the field started in Brazil around four decades ago. However, despite the decades, Brazil's educational system still lacks standardization. Our goal in this paper was to investigate how these professionals act in the field and, more importantly, how they were trained. To accomplish that, we selected all ‘Higher Education Institutions’ (IES) in Brazil that currently offers recognized Clinical Engineering specialization. The number of thirteen IES met the established criteria. The institution's information was collected through an exploratory search on the official e-MEC portal and from their respective own electronic addresses. The data were statistically structured and further analyzed. The results could overview each EC specialization program's structure, highlighting abilities and skills developed. Our analysis supports government officials’ standardization process and future candidate’s decisions.