Signs You're a Medtech Engineer: Readers Chime In

When left alone in your doctor's examination room, you look through the drawers and play with the Otoscope. 

You yell at the TV when the doctors on TV shows are using the equipment incorrectly. 

You explain to your primary care doctor the how to obtain more reliable readings from the health monitoring devices, and why. 

Your latest product design came as a result of self diagnosis of an illness you never had. 

You knew in school you wanted to be involved in healthcare, but didn't have the people skills to be a doctor. 

Your home is filled with tokens from the Med Device shows. 

You blatantly point out the unmet medical needs and insufficient standards of care to physicians in many specialties. 

When you look at someone, you're looking for the tell-tale signs of a colostomy bag, oxygen supply, or medical battery pack instead of their natural curves. 

You can navigate patent claims faster than most attorney's. 

While in the ER, waiting to be diagnosed, you troubleshoot the problem the nurse is having with whatever diagnostics or monitoring system s/he's trying to use on you. 

You are very proud of your Bioengineering PhD but continue to utilize your elementary school education on a daily basis. 

Always wanted to be a medical doctor but did the wrong subjects at school. 

You can create a 25 slide power point in under 30 minutes. 

You perform FMEA on personal projects at home or when planning a vacation. 

You break things to see how they work and then you add new features. 

Quality is more of a term to be dreaded than celebrated. 

Everything you own has silicone on it. 

You are able to understand and speak physician language but no one will ask or listen to you. 

Sample size does not mean the one-ounce portion cups of sample goodies handed out at the grocery store on Saturdays. 

Your bosses still don't understand what medical device development is all about. 

You collect and save all of your great ideas... that didn't work. 

You pronounce "centimeter" like "sonometer" because that's what you heard the doctor performing the animal study call it. 

You know the full capabilities of your lab and at least two vendors within driving distance who can provide any needed additional services. 

Your ideas and designs celebrate multiple birthdays on the way to maturity, just like your kids. 

We invest our money in stocks instead of expensive cars or ridiculous homes. We do not buy things we can not afford like the want to be engineers: (technicians, technologists, and factory workers). We are not show offs. 

You understand that populating a board has nothing to do with directors. 

You work really hard to ensure your product is "equivalent" to another product on the market. 

You're a "jack of all trades" (i.e. engineering disciplines including biology and physiology), but an expert in none. Your worth is in your ability to come-up-to-speed on things quickly and connecting-the-dots. 

You have waived your proximity card in front of the door bell while attempting to gain access to the front door of your own home. 

You are doing a brake job on your car and tell the guy at the auto parts store you need a "bilateral" set of pads and rotors. 

If you find an error on your shopping list, you strike out the incorrect item with a single line and initial and date the change. 

DQ means "design qualification" rather than a place to go out to eat. 

Your desk draw include items such as an X-acto knife, eye loupe, micrometers, various technical guides (materials, process, etc.), super glue, components from the last development project you worked on. 

You mix English and Metric units on the same drawing. 

When Grey's Anatomy or ER are on you're diligently scanning the OR for signs of your product. 

You complete inventory of emergency room medical devices and ask nurse for feedback when you are hospitalized. 

You have very funny stories/anecdotes from your animal/cadaver studies that no one out of your field will understand, find amusing or appreciate. 

For you 'dual use technology' is using a household item for building or supplementing a medical device. 

Your parents expect you to have the answers to any and all medical questions. 

You know that redesign is always better than guarding, labeling, or training. 

You hated the subject English in school, but now it seems like all you do is read standards and write reports.