Free Post 6: #1 in America!

This week I was wondering about how the profession of being a biomedical engineer was paid. I know it requires a lot of schooling to be one so I would think, or at least hope, that they get paid pretty well. So my first thought was to go to Google. My search was for “biomedical engineer jobs”. The top hit is an article from CNN. This article ranked the top 100 professions in America. And what was number one? Biomedical Engineer was ranked as the best job to have in America during 2012.the article briefly describes some statistics, such as median pay, max pay, and job growth. The profession is also broadly described. Then the article has a few short sections about how to become eligible for this kind of job as well as why it is a good job, and lastly what the hard part of the job is. The end of the piece about biomedical engineering has a letter grade for various quality of life categories.

The page says that it is a good job because it is high paying and there are a lot of different places a biomedical engineer could work. And at the bottom of the page the grade rankings gave this job an A for personal satisfaction, as well as benefit to society. It also received B’s for stress level and flexibility. The biggest problem, according to this article, is that professionals need to spend lots of time to keep up to date on the new advancements that their peers are making.

I was honestly surprised by some parts of this article. I was not really expecting that this profession would be ranked #1. I knew it was a good job but I wasn’t expecting a gold medal. I also found it surprising that this job got a B for stress. It seems to me that people would be more stressed out because they are making things that could be very harmful to people if their design fails once implemented. Just today I learned in class that a hip replacement that was used to replace around 10,000 hips had an 80-90% failure rate because of a problem with cleaning the hips. This led to most everyone needing a second procedure. The recipients led a law suit against the prosthetics company bankrupting them.

I was not at all surprised that this job was ranked highly, partially, because it allows engineers to improve the quality of life for many people by working with cutting edge technology. This is part of the reason I was drawn to the profession for my blog. I wanted to know about all the fancy do-hickeys that these engineers make. I was also not surprised that the biggest problem with this job was that engineers have to keep up on technological developments. The way technology is advancing, things become obsolete in record time. In this climate it makes it a necessity to keep track of what processes and programs are still relevant.

Work cited

“Best Jobs in America”. CNN Money. Cable News Network. 29 October 2012. Web 13 October 2013.