Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Applied Ethics. In it, a seasoned engineer is being
interviewed by a professional review panel and asked
whether he knew that the foundation of a building being
constructed was mismatched to the soil type. He said
that he did, but it was none of his business, since it was
the job of the soil engineers. The panel reminded him
that people died as a result of this failure. As the
Santillan case reminds us, medical scenarios can also
suffer since the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. This is the essence of biosystem engineering.
The work of technical professions is both the effect
and the cause of modern life. When undergoing medical
treatment and procedures, people expect physicians,
nurses, emergency personnel, and other health care
providers to be current and capable. Society's in-
frastructure, buildings, roads, electronic communica-
tions, and other modern necessities and conveniences are
expected to perform as designed by competent engineers
and planners. But how does society ensure that these
expectations are met? Much of the answer to this ques-
tion is that society cedes a substantial amount of trust to
a relatively small group of experts, the professionals in
increasingly complex and complicated disciplines that
have grown out of the technological advances that began
in the middle of the twentieth century and grew expo-
nentially in its waning decades.
Professions, including engineering, are not neatly
subdivided as they once were. A visit to the hospital
shows that not only do many of the physicians specialize
in particular areas of medicine (e.g., neuromedicine,
oncology, and geriatrics), but all of these physicians must
rely on chemists, radiologists, and tomographic experts
to obtain data about their patients (e.g., from serum
analysis, magnetic resonance and CT scans, and sonogra-
phy). In fact, many of the solutions (cures?) to health
problems require an intricate cacophony among doctors,
biomedical engineers, and technicians, as well as public
and community health professionals, epidemiologists,
and environmental engineers to prevent and control
many of the diseases, making treatment unnecessary. For
example, a drug delivery system requires the un-
derstanding of the biochemical needs of the patient, the
fluid mechanics of the pharmacology, and the actual
design of the apparatus. This is a continuum among
science, engineering, and technology.
Within this highly complex, contemporary environ-
ment, practitioners must ensure that they are doing
what is best for the profession and what is best for the
patient and client. This best practice varies by pro-
fession and even within a single professional discipline,
so the actual codified rules (codes of ethics, either ex-
plicit or implicit) must be tailored to the needs of each
group. However, many of the ethical standards are quite
similar for most technical professions. For example,
people
trustworthy. The trustworthiness is a function of how
good the professional is in the chosen field and how
ethical the person is in practice. Thus, the professional
possesses two basic attributes: subject matter knowl-
edge and character. Maximizing these two attributes
enhances professionalism.
Who is a professional?
There is some debate about just who is a professional.
I often ask the students enrolled in my Professional
Ethics course to give examples of professionals. The list
always includes physicians, engineers, airline pilots, and
lawyers, and usually includes accountants. A few stu-
dents consider clergy and military officers (not usually
enlisted personnel) to be professionals. Some include
businesspersons, teachers, and scientists. Only a small
minority includes professional athletes, although many
admit this is because the group includes the term
''professional.'' Several other disciplines are included,
but support diminishes after the first few. I approach
the query quite unscientifically, simply asking their
opinions, but this is interesting since I give them no
criteria from which to label something as a professional;
yet they are readily equipped to answer. I simply ask
whom they would identify as professionals, and a list is
generated.
I am often amazed by the intuitive powers of students
(actually, of people in general). They usually can differ-
entiate some very complicated subject matter (e.g.,
pollutant types, risk, values, and obligatory moral be-
havior), but they often cannot tell you why. In other
words, they cannot explain their methodology, but they
clearly use one. So, I delve a little more deeply by asking
the students to tell me why one group is professional and
another is not. They usually note readily that it is not that
one is necessarily more ''valuable'' than the other or that
ease or difficulty is a determining factor. Certain highly
technical, critical, difficult, and respected ''jobs,'' such as
that of an aircraft mechanic, are not generally considered
''professional.''
Most of us will admit that a certain threshold of ex-
pertise is needed to ascribe the label ''professional'' to
someone. However, as our aircraft mechanic example
demonstrates, clearly expertise is a necessary but in-
sufficient quality of professionalism. All professionals
must be experts in the field, but not all experts are
professionals. One distinguishing characteristic of a pro-
fessional is the level of accountability and degree of
responsibility. In our aircraft example, the mechanic
is a highly trained expert in a particular area, but with
a tightly defined span of control and realm of respon-
sibility. However, the airline pilot is responsible for all
want
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