Volunteering: a unique way to enhance your skills.

Medical technology professionals have many avenues to learn new skills, from manufacturer training to continuing education to attending conferences and keeping up on literature in the industry. But what about a way to build your own skills and benefit your employer, all for the cost of a few weeks of leave time and, as an added bonus, helping out others in need? There are many volunteer opportunities available that can help you grow professionally as well as personally. This article takes a look at the benefits of short-term volunteer assignments of one to two weeks and offers suggestions on how to prepare and get the most out of such opportunities. It doesn’t take a lifetime or careerchanging commitment to use your skills to help others, but it does take more planning than enrolling in a course or attending a meeting might. For example, a biomedical equipment technician (BMET) working in a large or mid-sized hospital with a team of colleagues may not have the chance to test his or her skills on a variety of equipment. If you’re not a laboratory equipment specialist, you might never repair a centrifuge. But on even a short-term volunteer assignment at a free clinic in the United States or a hospital in Indonesia hard-hit by the tsunami a few years back, you will likely encounter equipment and challenges you’d never face at home—repairing a piece of equipment whose manual was lost 20 years ago; dealing with a faulty device that is needed tomorrow, but parts won’t reach the area for six weeks and there’s no back-up device available; etc. These skills, no matter how obscure they seem, will make you a better employee back home.