Although I already have a good idea of what I want to do after graduation, last week I was able to set up a few informational interviews to hear more about the two areas I’d like to work in. Ideally, I’d like to be a clinical specialist or field clinical engineer and work with neuromodulation or cardiac devices. On Monday, I had an informational phone interview with a woman who is a Clinical Specialist for cardiac rhythm management devices at Boston Scientific in Chicago. Based on our conversation, this is what I learned about being a clinical specialist:

  • They are in a hospital, clinic, or emergency room every day helping implant and troubleshoot devices
  • It is a 24/7 job with on-call weekends and some holidays
  • It consists of long days standing in the OR wearing lead
  • They get their schedule the night before, so every day is different
  • In the OR, they program the device, pick lead lengths, check connections, and follow up with the patient the next day

This conversation confirmed that this is the job I want after graduation. While it may involve traveling often and an unpredictable schedule, I like the idea of doing something different every day and seeing first-hand the positive effects that medical devices can have on the lives of patients. I also had an informational interview with the Neuromodulation R&D Manager here at Heredia. A lot of my coursework senior year focused on neuromodulation, so I was excited to learn more about the devices Boston Scientific has. They currently have a deep brain stimulation system and a spinal cord stimulation system on the market. I learned that the Boston Scientific neuromodulation devices are based on the technology of the cochlear implant, while other neuromodulation devices on the market are based on pacemaker technology. It was really interesting to hear about which materials are used and how the devices are programmed. We got to see the software that the physician uses to program the devices in the OR, as well as the pulse generators that are implanted in the patient.

Both of these meetings were very informative and reaffirmed my career goals. I am hoping to have some sort of field clinical engineer or clinical specialist internship during the year to get more experience working in that kind of setting. This week at my internship, I will continue to work on the design verification report that I have been writing and working on a document summary for the design verification data for one of the DOTs. I will also be working on the test method project for the guidewire. The team on that project arrived back in Costa Rica from doing animal and tensile testing in Minnesota last week, which went well. They were able to get feedback from the physician performing the animal testing on which prototypes were the best and the worst. The synthetic venous tissue that we ordered came, and today Annie and I washed it and got it ready to conduct our first test tomorrow. Ciao!