I have spent a good time in the radiology technologies business selling , training and help workers there to develop and use the technologies to the maximum benefits of the patients and hospitals .
during these years, I have noticed there a big gap between medical imaging technologies, features and users’ knowledge, and that’s cause sometimes problems for the users adding stress to them , because :
· hospital invested a lot of money but same results from the department.
· complicated machines and software’s with extra features, need a lot of things to do and understand.
· the new technologies didn’t work probably all the time.
In my opinion the best strategy to reduce the stress to your clients and increase the efficiency and outcome from the new technologies , is by :
training …. training … training: most of the users are not trained probably on their new machines, so they keep using the same old protocols to avoid complications specially in the busy hospitals, and that’s enough to reflect the poor out come from the new purchased technologies.
but this reason is not because the user only, it is supplier companies’ responsibilities as well,
how is that?
Presentations , brochures and nice photos is not enough
It is rarely to see a supplier company with the same fixed sales or application trained team for couple of years, and that’s due the market challenges and the most is because the mismanagement style, so the staff keep jumping from company to company, or even shifting to another kind of applications to avoid these conflicts, and that’s insure the user will not have prober person to deal with or training cause the trainer himself (supplier employee) trained for short time only or without enough experiences on these technologies.
Also, many of the supplier companies don’t provide a training or follow up meetings schedule after sales, to study and evaluate the technologies from customers or users prospective.
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Some of my customers were surprised from my follow up visits to check their outcome on the machine, which they purchased from me, they felt really happy. that was for me as a learning tool to increase my knowledge about my machines from customers point of view to develop my sales and training skills for the next customer.
This was my opinion, until I found a really interesting Qualitative study in 2017 done by group of researchers about the same problem in Netherlands.
The opinions of radiographers, nuclear medicine technologists and radiation therapists regarding technology in health care: a qualitative study
By: Emad Baba