Volunteering at Two Central American Hospitals: a Canadian Clinical Engineer’s Perspective

Abstract

Inaccessibility of medical equipment in low resource settings is a challenge and an obstacle to providing care. Some of the contributing factors to this problem are discussed in this paper based on the two-months volunteering experience of the author at two hospitals in Central America. This firsthand experience alludes to the shortage of functional equipment, impractical reliance on donated equipment, lack of equipment donation policy, inadequate healthcare technology management policies, and lack of technical resources. In order to have a sustainable impact on improving accessibility of medical equipment, the clinical engineering professionals need to focus their volunteering work on developing local resources in order to increase local ownership and participation.