March Guru of the Month - Jean Roberts

Joining the National Guard in 2007, Jean Roberts was interested in either a recession-proof tech job or a medical job. His recruiter had a position open for the first Guard Biomed Tech, so he headed out to basic training! After falling in love through training at the DoD Schoolhouse, Jean's been in the HTM field ever since! He currently works at the University of Vermont as a Biomed III in the Instrumentation & Technical Services in Burlington, Vermont.

Jean spends most of his time integrating new devices to the EHR at their facility, and troubleshooting networking issues within their out-patient monitoring environment. As far as individual devices go, ventilators tend to be his bread and butter! Currently, he has a Hamilton T-1, Precess 3160, Philips PIIC iX, Carefusion LTV 1200, and many Philips MP-MX Series monitors on his bench.

Jean has been a MedWrench user for about three years or so. He often browses MedWrench to review a new (to their facility) model, see if any common issues/fixes exist and capture any available documentation for their records. 

"If your first look finds you stumped, MedWrench is a great second look!"

He makes every effort to attend service training at least annually, and shares, "If you are not continuously attempting to improve yourself... the devices, customers, and most importantly, the patients suffer the most. "We shall not rest on our laurels" really drove the point home for me in schooling."

If Jean could share anything with anyone just graduating and entering into the HTM field, he said, "Don't settle for adequate. Be different and go further than is sufficient. Learn from everything you do - even if a repair goes poorly - if you take away something it isn't a complete loss. You'll be a better technician if you learn to adopt, rather than adapt to new technology. Learn and apply new tools, and make a point to show your fellow technicians, we're all on the same team!"

Outside of his career, Jean loves hiking with his wife and dog. Renovations have become his latest hobby as they are prepping for their soon-to-be baby girl! He claims to be a "pretty big nerd" on the outside as well and enjoys tackling scientific projects through BOINC.

Thank you, Jean, for your dedication to the HTM field! We appreciate your input and wisdom in our community. 

Want to be our next MedWrench Guru or know someone that should? Send us an email at mandy@medwrench.com to nominate or be considered!