Abstract
The biomedical engineering departments (BMD) in healthcare facilities in Saudi Arabia play important roles in promoting health services by managing medical technology. Nevertheless, it is challenging to assess the number of needed cadres in BMD. This study is first of its kind that included at least 10% of the major healthcare facilities (HCF) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a capacity of 100 beds or more to estimate the details of the personnel required for BMD and determine the factors affecting the number of BMD staffs. The most influencing factors found included (i) HCF total beds (r=0.84), (ii) HCF gross area (r=0.92), (iii) HCF total staff (r=0.90), (iv) total number of medical devices (r=0.92), (v) total cost of medical devices or technology (r=0.95) and (vi) BMD activities and roles (r=0.70). Mean values of these variables per BMD staff were found as 23 bed, 148 hospital employee, 2,520 square meter hospital area, 282 medical devices, and $2.84 million acquisition cost of medical device. Interestingly, the designed BMD activity form showed a reasonable linear correlation with BMD staff (r=0.70). Regarding the staffing adequacy status, the survey analysis showed 45% of BMDs to have under staffing and only 7% to have overstaffing status. In order to address and provide a credible solution to BMD staffing problem a heuristic formula was developed as a second part of our study (results not shown). Further testing of this model on a wide range of healthcare facilities to improve on the applicability and reliability is in progress.