Why some clinical biomedical engineers may doubt today whether to stay or go away?

Abstract

Regulation of engineering professions engaged in clinical settings seems to be a process that takes time and requires maturation of awareness and understanding of the digital era of increasingly sophisticated and high technological modern medicine. The objective of this work is to present the current status of clinical biomedical engineers in Croatia. All higher education study programs in Croatia have been aligned with the Bologna structure in 2005, and students can enroll into two kinds of education – polytechnics/schools of professional higher education and universities. So far, neither national classification of scientific and artistic areas, fields and branches includes Biomedical Engineering, nor any university study leads to degree explicitly in Biomedical Engineering. New National Classification of Occupations (NKZ-10) from 2010 is fully compliant with the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) from 2008, including explicitly for the first time the occupation of ‘biomedical engineer’ as an integral part of health work force. However, job titles and job complexity salary coefficients in public services are not aligned with the NKZ-10, Bologna structure or Croatian Qualification Framework. Clinical biomedical engineer is not regulated profession and is considered as allied health profession at the bottom of the university graduates salary scale, without some career advancement possibilities typical for health professionals.