Please send all corespondense via postal mail to:
Ohio Clinical Engineering Association
Post Office Box 46615
Bedford, Ohio 44146
To email all members of the OCEA Executive Committee send to:
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Our Mission Statement
“To improve the quality of patient care and safety by providing our members the opportunity to grow and develop their technical skills in the selection, repair, and support of clinical medical equipment and to promote cooperation through the exchange of information and ideas between members and other organizations.”
The Ohio Clinical Engineering Association (abbreviated OCEA) is a group of medical equipment maintenance professionals located in Ohio in the United States of America. This association has periodic regional meetings on a varying schedule and has held a few statewide meetings. It is the intent of this group to continue into the future in this manner.
OCEA History
The Ohio Clinical Engineering Association started in 1974 as a group of hospital medical equipment engineers who were a part of a joint Safety Committee group of the Greater Cleveland Hospital Association. These engineers had a disagreement with the City of Cleveland over electrical testing laboratory requirements for Medical Equipment that was in use in the city. After this disagreement was resolved, these engineers continued to meet on a regular basis and the organization Clinical Engineering Technology Association CETA was formed.
In 1980 the words North Coast were added to the name to designate the geographic area of Northern Ohio near Lake Erie and NCCETA was created.
In the 1990′s other organizations came into existence in Ohio. There was the Toledo Biomed Association, the Central Ohio Medical Equipment Technicians Association, and the Dayton Biomed. OCEA is a combination of all of these Ohio associations and we are still in the process of collecting information about these older groups. We are seeking your help with this collecting process so if you have further details about these early organizations please contact us via email at:
In 2002, after being dormant for a few years, NCCETA was brought back into existence. In 2003 the decision was made by the 2003 Executive Committee to make the organization State Wide and the new name Ohio Clinical Engineering Association OCEA was selected for the new and larger organization.
In February of 2011 this new website was created.
~~~ GREAT NEWS ABOUT OCEA ~~~
In April of 2012 The Ohio Clinical Engineering Association was selected by TechNation Magazine as Association of the Month.
The Ohio Clinical Engineering Association
A convergence of biomed associations back in the 90s produced the Ohio Clinical Engineering Association. Those associations included the Toledo Biomed Association, the Central Ohio Medical Equipment Technicians Association and the Dayton Biomed Association. The name of the statewide organization became the Ohio Clinical Engineering Association (OCEA) in 2005.
The seeds of the organization were originally planted even earlier. In 1974, a group of hospital medical equipment engineers with the Greater Cleveland Hospital Association, sitting on a joint safety committee, took issue with the city over some requirements for hospital equipment. The city wanted all devices to be UL listed. Some smaller companies that produced equipment may not have submitted their products for listing, so the safety group disagreed on the requirement. After this, the group started meeting regularly to share their knowledge.
Among the original organizers of the predecessor organization were Ken Urbanek, then director of clinical engineering at the Cleveland Clinic and Glenn Blackwell, then director of clinical engineering at Cleveland Metro General Hospital.
OCEA’s president, Dick Felton, CBET summarizes the association’s purpose: “We have always felt that in order to be successful we as an organization, (we) must answer for our members the simple question of, ‘What’s in it for me?’” he says. “In the busy life of a typical biomed, we must provide our members with value, or they will go somewhere else and do something else. We must do something that will make the biomeds in Ohio want to be a member and want to participate.”
“We keep our website up to date and post some news, education material, or a special announcement each and every weekday. If our members or associates wish, they can receive these daily updates via email by subscribing to them on our website home page. This is available to anyone, whether they are in Ohio or not.”
Reasons to join
Felton remembers what drove him to join the group originally. “I was seeking out certification for myself and I wanted to get with a group that had that common goal. At that particular time, the group had a certification study group that was meeting once a week and going over the certification study process,” he says. “That’s what got me involved in the first place. I think that many others would feel the same way because they are always going about getting their certifications. We have held that certification class for a long time because it always seemed to draw enough interest from a lot of people, not only in the greater-Cleveland area where I’m from but from all across the state.”
An annual symposium is not really a part of the group’s planning. Instead, they focus on a less frequent major get-together. “We don’t really have a big annual meeting. We do instead have one every few years,” Felton says. “We learned this technique from the very successful New England Society of Clinical Engineering (NESCE) and are actually trying it out this year. Our last conference was in 2008,” Felton says. “We are planning a conference to be held in Columbus Ohio at Devry University this year on Friday, April 27, 2012.”
“On Thursday, April 26, in the evening we are planning a meet-and-greet and then on Friday April 27, we will have our conference meeting. We are finalizing the details.”
Regular monthly meetings are not usually on the agenda either. Instead, they occur as scheduled. “We have meetings periodically during the year, and at least one meeting per year in each one of our regions. We have four regions: Southern, Central, Northwest and Northeast. The schedule varies based on what is going on in the state,” Felton says.
Supporting new recruits
OCEA does not have their own scholarship program, but they support and promote the Terry M. Speth Service Professional Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship was established in 2009 in memory of Speth who was founder and president of the Radiological Service Training Institute and an OCEA member. The fund provides scholarships to biomed students with a grade point average of 2.5 or higher.
The association has members who have involvement with biomedical programs in some of the community colleges in Ohio. Those academic programs include Owens Community College in Toledo, Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Devry University in Columbus and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Cincinnati. Advisory committee member Paul Svatik teaches at the program at Owens Community College, which offers a two-year biomedical program.
The VP of the association’s Central Region (Columbus) is Dr. Rasoul Esfahani. As an Associate Dean with Devry, he is intimately familiar with the academic side of biomed and getting students interested in participating in a professional association like OCEA. “I took a group of students and faculty to the annual event. Last December, our central region had a presentation that was on our campus. Some of our students attended.”
Dr. Esfahani has been involved with OCEA for four years. “I really got involved with them because we have a program here that has graduates that are getting into the field of biomed. It was a natural that I got involved with this organization to create networking for our students and make sure that everybody in the field are aware that we have this program. It worked very well.”
The Central Region held a meeting last December along with the other regions. The annual conference will be hosted in the Central Region at Devry’s campus in April.
The OCEA leadership includes President Dick Felton, VP Southern Region Brent Clark, VP Central Region Rasoul Esfahani, VP Northwest Region Jerry Ochs, VP Northeast Region Chris Kavanagh and Event Coordinator Steve Maples.
“We work hard at providing value to our members and take our mission statement very seriously, Felton says. “Our Mission Statement is as follows: ‘To improve the quality of patient care and safety by providing our members the opportunity to grow and develop their technical skills in the selection, repair, and support of clinical medical equipment and to promote cooperation through the exchange of information and ideas between members and other organizations.’”
The association produces a useful email that anyone can sign up to receive. Visit ohiocea.wordpress.com for more information.
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