HTM for the Next Generation | Jennifer Chester
Jul 18, 2024
Mon, Jul 15, 2024 12:58PM • 26:52
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
biomed, htm, kids, jennifer, work, book, bella, field, inspiring, put, absolutely, love, davita, woodlands, microphones, blood pressure cuff, give, build, insight, realized
SPEAKERS
Chyrill Sandrini, Jennifer Chester
00:00
Chyrill Sandrini 00:13
Welcome back to HTM Insider. I’m Chyrill with MultiMedical Systems, MMS, your host, and I’m excited today about our guest, Jennifer Chester. I know you guys know her. You probably want to know more about her, like I do, I’m gonna let Jennifer introduce herself, and we’re going to talk about all kinds of fun stuff today regarding her book and some other insights that she has. Hi Jennifer, and welcome to HTM Insider.
Jennifer Chester 00:40
Hi and thank you so much for having me. I’m so just grateful to be here today. And like you stated earlier, my name is Jennifer Chester. I am a Biomed Level Two for Crothall Healthcare, and I work in Houston, Texas, and I don’t know what else you guys want to know about me? I wrote a book, of course, yeah.
Chyrill Sandrini 01:04
Well, first of all, how’d you become a biomed? What’s your path? It’s always interesting to to hear about how people got into this industry, because it’s kind of obscure field choice.
Jennifer Chester 01:16
You know, it is. Everybody’s journey is always so different when I hear it. So the way I got in, basically, I went to college for art, and I loved art, but I realized that it wasn’t paying a whole ton of money when I got out of school. So I decided that I wanted to be in the Air Force Reserves. So I joined the Air Force Reserves just to get some training, and, you know, also just to get that military experience as well. And when I transitioned out of the Air Force, I was just kind of looking through some different jobs that might be transferable, that I could use the knowledge that I gained in the Air Force as a avionics technician, and biomed jobs started to pop up, and I decided to apply for a couple, and I landed one at DaVita. So it started there, and from there, I went on to do a lot of contract jobs for larger medical companies, and I’ve been in it ever since.
Chyrill Sandrini 02:21
What a great story. Now, I know you just said AAMI and you were signing books, which is amazing. We gotta talk about Bella first, right? Let’s talk about Bella’s big fix. What a storyline you got going on there. Tell us about it.
02:39
So Bella’s Big Fix is just the story of a girl that really loves tools and loves tinkering, as I did when I was little, and then even my little kids now, my two babies, they love to do that kind of thing. And she grows up to be a biomed and she realizes that, you know, her talents could be used to save people one machine at a time. So,
Chyrill Sandrini 03:07
I mean, I love seeing it. I love the book. I kind of ask, Are you the illustrator? I
03:14
am, I am the illustrator. Yes,
Chyrill Sandrini 03:17
I didn’t know you had an art background, and I was really curious about that. So that’s amazing. Yeah, you did great work.
Jennifer Chester 03:25
Thank you. Thank you.
Chyrill Sandrini 03:28
What was your inspiration to write a book or or start this? I mean, where did you see a need?
Jennifer Chester 03:35
So I do. I work with kids all the time. I have a nonprofit organization called NextJenn Tech Moms Mobile Discovery Museum. So working with kids all the time with STEM and different computational activities that we do with robots and stuff like that, I just realized the power of storytelling when they are really zoned in on a on a story, or how to, like, get them, I guess, to know about things. It’s easier when you can tell them a story about it, or kind of give them a map, or give them a little background on what other people are doing. I even did it in my activity booklets. I had like a, what do you call it? It was an engineer highlight. So whenever I do an activity booklets for the kids, so every activity booklet has an engineer highlight inside of it, and they read stories of like the youngest software engineer, or like read stories of the first the inventor of the telephone or the inventor of the microphone, and they would be really interested by that. So I realized that, you know, I could get across to them if I told the story of a biomed so.
Chyrill Sandrini 04:54
And what do you what do you hone in on as a message to the kids? Is it, do we come at biomed to be more curious, are you targeting little girls, boys, both?
Jennifer Chester 05:05
I hope to target any of those. You know, of course, Bella is a girl because I’m a girl.
Chyrill Sandrini 05:13
It’s a lot like you!
Jennifer Chester 05:17
I love to you know, representation really matters to me. I think that even if it’s a little boy seeing a little girl doing it just the not having the surprise of a little girl doing a job like that, or growing up to be something like that, but it could, I hope, that inspires any of those. Little boys, little girls, you know, all of them. So yeah,
Chyrill Sandrini 05:44
Well, I think it’s great. You know, I have two young grandchildren, and you bet that when they’re ready, when it’s, you know, one and a half in three months, they’re not quite yet
Jennifer Chester 05:54
Early, early.
Chyrill Sandrini 05:56
I know that I’m going to share Bella’s big fix with them. I think it’s important that we start that message young, because I’m still asked all the time, what do you do? I may not turn a wrench, but it’s still hard to explain what biomeds do, right, right and and how they impact patient safety and patient care?
Jennifer Chester 06:15
Yeah, absolutely. I have a a close friend who is a school counselor, and she, you know, is inspiring kids every day to start going, taking a path, or, you know, moving in the direction. And before I became a biomed, she had no idea what it was. So just her having that insight gives her the, you know, the means to add that path to the things that she can, she can introduce to her kids. So, you know, visibility is very important, showing that it exists and exactly what it does. Because a lot of times when you say it, I get two responses. I get “I have no idea what that is,” or “That sounds really complicated,” you know. So just giving, you know, a very clear understanding of what it is that we do can just change, you know, make a big change in how people perceive it.
Chyrill Sandrini 07:17
And I think the older we get, the harder it is to wrap our minds around it. And children are so open to any type of experience, and so open to learning, just like in language, we the younger you learn the language, the longer it sticks with you. The earlier we introduce clinical engineering language. Yeah, it is. It’s, you know, we use a lot of acronyms in healthcare, and it just is another language, right? But learn the tools, and I think it’s amazing, right? So what have you seen so far? What is the impact and experience that people maybe are coming back to you going, Oh, I read this book, or I saw this book. What kind of impact are you experiencing with this book?
Jennifer Chester 08:09
Man, it it’s having an impact that I never imagined that it would have when I sat down to write Bella’s Big Fix, and when I started, you know, drawing, working on the pictures and trying to put the book together, I just never imagined that it would have the impact that it does. And I do see, like, a lot of people come up to me and be like, oh man, that story was really inspiring. And even they we want to get out and be in biomed. I’m talking about, like adults, you know. So it’s, it’s made, it’s made a pretty big impact. And then recently, I went to a summer camp just for an hour to talk to them about Bella. And then we worked on some other STEM programs, or STEM projects that they love to do. They made their own video game, and that was exciting, but they were able to learn about Bella, and what Bella did, you know, does every day. And they had tons of questions, and they they wanted to, you know, read the book, and they wanted to touch the doll, and you know what I mean. So they, they seem very, very interested. So that that really made me happy, because that, like I said, when like, or like you said, introducing this to them when they’re young is important simply because, like, when you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, they have a lot of they have a lot of answers, but biomed is not one of them. So to me, it’s really important, or it’s really nice to hear now that they have kind of some insight on what we do, and they can make that choice, whether they make it or not, but at least it’s available to them, and they realize that it’s available to them.
Chyrill Sandrini 09:53
I can’t imagine the process that you’ve gone through and the money that you spent probably under your own pocket to develop a book published, and then getting out there and all that. I mean, kudos to you. What an undertaking.
Jennifer Chester 10:12
Thank you. It really to be to really, to be honest, it’s been just a lot of time and dedication that I put into doing it. And then, you know, I self published. So it wasn’t super expensive for the publishing part, but I did go to an editor, a private editor on the side, and, you know what I mean, some other things, just to make sure that it was, it was perfect, because I didn’t want to put out anything that I couldn’t be proud of.
Chyrill Sandrini 10:44
Now, where can parents get this book sent to them? How do they buy it?
Jennifer Chester 10:51
So I am currently only selling it via IngramSpark, but that is because all of the proceeds from the sale of the book do go towards NextJenn Tech Moms Mobile Discovery Museum. We’re now developing a program where kids can learn about medical devices. They can actually put their hands on medical devices. We’ve done a couple of classes already where they get to play with like veinfinders. They always think those are really cool, because they think it’s like X ray vision. But, you know, and they built different things. Like I had them put together their own stethoscope, you know, stuff like that. And we want to expand on that. So we want to, you know, take those proceeds and put them towards more complicated and more, you know, fun programs for the kids to actually be involved in so, yeah, so it’s only being sold on IngramSpark Because, you know, the other distributors do take a large chunk of the proceeds. So,
Chyrill Sandrini 11:51
yeah, well, that’s awesome, and we’ll make sure to add that link when we put this podcast out. You know, when we’re talking about NextJenn Tech Moms, I’ve looked it up. Looks really cool. Looks like it’s mobile. And so you’re, you’re the person behind that as well.
Jennifer Chester 12:08
Yes, yes. So I’m the founder of NextJenn Tech Moms Mobile Discovery Museum. Um, so we bring our Mobile Discovery Museum to the Woodlands Parks and Recreation every second Saturday of the month. And I have a young innovators club who shows up, and we get to, you know, do different projects. I My motto is, learn it, build it, play it. So we always learn about a skill first, or learn about, you know, some subject, and then after that, then we get to build something like, say, for instance, we’ve done microphones like we’ll learn about microphones and how they work and why we use them and how we use them in our everyday life. And then we actually get to build our own microphones. And then we make once we build our microphones, after that, we get to play karaoke with our microphones. So, you know, a short period after we build the microphones, we do a little karaoke with the microphones. The kids enjoy it and have some fun, but it’s just learning about how things are made and why we use them. And, you know, just giving them more insight on the world around them and how it works.
Chyrill Sandrini 13:25
So inspiring. And I gotta tell the listeners. I mean, if you have not met Jennifer in person, she’s infectious! Like her smile, her laughter, just being around her. The first time I met her, I knew, I knew you had to come on. HTM Insider, I think we were in Florida. Maybe I can’t remember when I met you first. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I just love you.
Jennifer Chester 13:49
Oh well, thank you so much. Thank you. That means a lot.
Chyrill Sandrini 13:52
You’re welcome. So for our listeners that don’t know where you’re based out of I know you mentioned Woodlands, tell us like, where you’re at and you know, if they’re in the area, where to where to find you, maybe on that Saturday.
Jennifer Chester 14:06
So on that Saturday we do, it’s at the Bear Branch Recreation Center in The Woodlands, Texas, um, every second Saturday of the month, we don’t miss one well over the summer time we we do miss the summertime just because a lot of our kids will go out of town for vacation. So we don’t get a lot of kids who come in over the summertime, but we start up again in August, 2nd Saturday in August, we will be there and having a good time at the Bear Branch Recreation Center.
Chyrill Sandrini 14:38
Now for listeners, if you don’t know, Woodlands is just in the Greater Houston area. It’s down by the water, if I recall correctly, yes, yeah, it’s a beautiful area. So if you’re in the area and you’re curious about bringing your kids by, I know you can reach out to Jennifer, and she’ll be happy to give you all the dates, times and details, absolutely. Right?
Jennifer Chester 15:00
Yeah,
Chyrill Sandrini 15:01
I gotta tell you how inspiring you are. So I just want to dive in a little bit further on your experience as a Biomed. So you’re a Biomed II. What are your aspirations to grow in this career field? I mean, already making such an impact. You’re already a leader. You’re becoming like just a known personality in the HTM world, we want to know what you’re looking for next?
Jennifer Chester 15:25
Right now, I love so much what I do. I love the turning screwdrivers part of what I do. I also love the direct impact that I see every day I’m in field service. So I also love, you know, the kind of freedom of it, and being able to kind of, you know, do things at my own pace and everything, but I hope at one point I can move up to management, because I would really love to manage a team or manage people, just because I hope that I can be a really good manager to them and to train and to, you know, build that next level of biomeds.
Chyrill Sandrini 16:12
Yeah, I think you’d be an awesome mentor to so many coming in the field. Now, when you talk about field service, and for listeners that are just getting into the industry, or curious about the industry, you want to take a moment to explain field service versus in house biomed? And the different type of jobs that are out there.
Jennifer Chester 16:30
Yeah. Um, absolutely. Um, so I’ve been in both. I have been, um, well, I was kind of in house when I was working with DaVita, because I was working at a specific hospital in their unit, and then I moved on to doing more field service related positions and field services more freedom. You’re not like narrowed down to like one hospital or one center. You’re more spread out. So currently, I work for Harris health, the ACS clinics on the outside of the county hospital system, which means that I don’t cover just one clinic. I come from several clinics around, which means that means travel, right? So that means I have to move around. I don’t get to stay in one place, but I manage all a bunch of different clinics in the area. So I think that that’s the difference. The difference really is that you kind of have more freedom, and you’re on your own, you you’re almost on an island a little bit, but at the same time, you still get to perform those same tasks, just in a different capacity, with the travel involved.
Chyrill Sandrini 17:40
Yeah, I think that, you know, I think it’s good to have a diverse background. And coming from DaVita, you know, which is a completely different program. It’s still, you know, biomed, for sure, but those are totally different. It’s totally different than what you see, maybe at an in house program and a field service, right?
Jennifer Chester 18:00
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, um, it’s, it is totally different.
Chyrill Sandrini 18:08
So if you had a crystal ball and you can see into the future, what do you think these elementary kids school, their inspiration coming into the field? Do you think we’re going to see a lot getting into biome because we’re, we’re so short handed, right?
Jennifer Chester 18:26
Yes, yes, we are. And I’m hoping that this changes things, simply for visibility reasons. I’m hoping that they can see that it’s there. I think that a lot of people, like we talked at the talked about at the beginning, a lot of people kind of trip and fall into biomed, right? So they kind of like end up here because of life circumstances, or because somebody whispered in their ear, or somebody pointed them in this direction. So I feel like if we start getting them young enough, between the ages of like eight and 12, like starting to at least know that it exists, so the know this is a viable career field as well, then they can start making choices towards what their future looks like earlier. That’s my hope. If I, you know, like you said, if I was to look into a crystal ball, I would hope to see that, you know, when they start getting into high school, they start making more choices towards STEM-related careers, and then making, you know, choices towards biomed at the end of their high school matriculated.
Chyrill Sandrini 19:43
I really feel biomed, you know, we should do field trips to biomed shops, you know, yeah, you do, right? You do field trips to the police station, the fire station, you know, I think, it would be great. So
Jennifer Chester 20:01
I thought about that too. I was thinking about, yeah, I was, I’m sorry. I was thinking how, like, you know, they bring fire trucks to the school, and the kids would get all excited because they’ve got, you know, the hoses, and they’ve got all the you know, stuff. And I was like, we’ve got cool stuff too. We could bring to schools, you know, and show them what we do, and show them how important it is, and also give them an opportunity to put their hands on it, just like, like you said, like a policeman comes in, and at the last career day I was at, the policeman came in, he was a hit because he had his his bulletproof vest, and they can see how heavy it was, you know, and just bringing in a couple of devices for them to look at. I know when I went to career, they have brought my own personal blood pressure cuff. And I had the kids guess. First I had them guess what I did, which I knew they nobody would guess so the guest Doctor and all kinds of other stuff. But when I finally told them what I what I did, then we went through troubleshooting, how to make you know why the blood pressure cuff wasn’t working, and all I did was separate the blood pressure cuff from the device, and they’re like, well, the air has to get to the cuff. We’ll have to get to the cuff. How do you fix it? So we go through that stuff in like, first grade, second grade classes, and they were just really excited to check their own blood pressure. You’d be surprised, just having the kids check their own blood pressure, they were just excited.
Chyrill Sandrini 21:27
Yeah, that’s a big thing, right? So, you know, I know that AAMI and Danielle do a great job with, you know, HTM in a box and outreach, but don’t you think that somehow, if we could get into every counselor and every teacher’s hand? Yes, exciting career, right? Yes, you know, and I know Chase Torres has a great book, we could, yeah, into the hands of preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers, you know, early elementary where they can start reading about it and learning about it. I think it, it could change the industry overall, absolutely.
Jennifer Chester 22:11
And I mean, and with, with that being said, I think both me and Chase have tried to do some donations to, like, local libraries or to schools. I know I’ve donated to several classrooms like my kids. I had a I got a call in the middle of night for my children’s English teacher. She called me and she said she’s, are you still signing books? Can you bring me a book? And I was like, Absolutely, I’ll bring you a book. If you promise to read it, I will bring it up there. So I brought her a book so that she could, you know, read it to her class, and that’s how we’re going to get the word out, just, you know, making sure that it gets in the right hands and making sure that people are sharing this with their with their kids.
Chyrill Sandrini 22:58
Well, you’re gonna have to get me some signed copies so I could help spread the word about Bella’s Big Fix, absolutely, and I’ll make sure we get some copies in my daughter’s school. She teaches four year olds and moving up to, like, five, six year olds, so I’ll make sure it’s on her reading list. She would, yeah, they, they’re all about, you know, taking the kids outside and learning how things work and how things grow. So this fits right into it. So I’m just amazed by you. You really inspired me to do better. I know that everyone that sees you. You’re constantly giving hugs on the conference floor. That smile is so contagious,
Jennifer Chester 23:41
and everybody is just so kind, and so, you know, so sweet. I just, I love being in this industry, because it’s, it’s almost like a catch 22 because I love how small it is and how intimate it is, you know, and how comfortable it is. But we want to grow right? We want to grow bigger, and that’s that’s going to be a really great thing. But I also love all of the people that you know that are just in this industry, because they all have like, you know, we all have, like, this compassionate spirit, and I just really love it. So I appreciate seeing your, your very friendly face every time I go to the conferences as well.
Chyrill Sandrini 24:23
Oh, thank you so much. You know, for those of you listening, and maybe you’re thinking about HTM as a career field, there is no other place that when you attend a conference that you could see so many people giving hugs, handshakes, smiles. It’s great to see you. It’s a small community, it’s like a giant family reunion every time we’re at a conference. Yeah, so if you like that, feel HTM is definitely for you. Wouldn’t you agree Jennifer?
Jennifer Chester 24:51
Yes, absolutely. 100%
Chyrill Sandrini 24:55
So we like to end every episode with a WoW, Word of Wisdom here on htm. Insider, so I’m very excited to see what you have for us today. Jennifer, what’s your WoW?
Jennifer Chester 25:07
So my Wow, my words of wisdom, I always say this, but create your own path. Okay, um, don’t wait for somebody to create the path for you. Don’t wait for you know it to open up. Just make sure that you’re creating your own path and you’re living it the best you in that path.
Chyrill Sandrini 25:34
I love that you’re right. Sometimes we get so influenced by the outside world and social media. Just be you.
Jennifer Chester 25:41
Just be you. Just be you. And it’ll all come together. All the dots will start to connect.
Chyrill Sandrini 25:49
Well. Thank you, Jennifer, so much for coming on today and again. If you guys haven’t read the book, you haven’t seen it, you go find Jennifer on LinkedIn, absolutely, very active. If you need to be connected with her and you can’t find her, reach out to me. I’ll make sure you get connected. Check out Bella’s Big Fix. If there’s someone that you know that could do some inspiration the HTM world through the young leaders, I know that Jennifer would be happy to help you. Thanks again, Jennifer, and thank you all for tuning in to HTM Insider, just a reminder, you can find us anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast, and if you are a CBET and seeking CE credits, you’ve listened through tech nation, and every episode of htm insider is worth one CE credit for 30 minutes and your time. So thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time on HTM Insider!