JOB RESPONSIBILITIES OF REHABILITATION ENGINEERS IN VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION AGENCIES

Neil F. Lown Center for Rehabilitation Technology Services West Columbia, SC

ABSTRACT

The role of rehabilitation engineers in vocational rehabilitation agency settings is essentially undefined in spite of years of debate and discussion. To address this problem, a dialogue was opened at a RESNA conference in 1993 to begin to define the job duties of individuals functioning as rehabilitation engineers in vocational rehabilitation agencies across the country. A survey instrument was developed as a result of this dialogue; data from the survey is discussed.

BACKGROUND

In 1992, the Center for Rehabilitation Technology Services sent a survey to all 81 vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies in the United States. Of the agencies surveyed, 61 responded. This survey found that there were over 60 different job titles held by the 121 individuals who completed the Rehabilitation Engineer Profile. (2). Attigupam (1) reported a breakdown of time spent in various activities by persons functioning as rehabilitation engineers (rehabilitation technology providers) based on the CRTS survey. Activity areas identified were: Management/Administrative Activities; Service Delivery; Community Service; Training; Research; and Other.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the research is to more fully describe the job duties of rehabilitation engineers by describing their job duties in terms of (1) the amount of time actually spent doing the tasks, and (2) the relative amount of importance the respondents assigned to the tasks.

METHOD/APPROACH

A focus group was convened at a RESNA conference; the group identified specific rehabilitation engineering job tasks they performed in the areas of: Management/Administration; Service Delivery; Community Service; Training; Research; and Other. These duties were listed, broken down into job tasks, and compiled into a questionnaire sent to 215 individuals who were identified as rehabilitation engineering service providers by VR agencies nationwide. Some of these providers were VR employees; others were outside contractors who provide rehabilitation engineering services to VR agencies. VR employees were asked to account for all of their time; contractors were asked to account for only the time they spent working with VR clients. They were asked which of the listed job tasks they performed; to identify how much of their time was spent performing each job task, and to identify how important they felt each job task was to their job as a rehabilitation engineer. Reminder post cards were sent out three months after the questionnaires in an attempt to improve the response rate. For each task, each person responding was asked (1) Is this task part of your job? (yes/no); (2) What relative amount of time do you spend on these tasks? (5 point Likert scale); and (3) What is the relative importance of this task to you as a rehabilitation engineer? (5 point Likert scale). Finally, each respondent was asked what percent of his/her total time was spent on tasks in each of the major categories. All responses are confidential and anonymous.

RESULTS

Each of the major job task categories was broken down into job tasks as specified by the focus group. Within each major category, an other category was provided in case there was a job task that clearly fit within the category, but was not covered in any of the more specific job task descriptions. Additionally, a sixth major category of other was included in case there was a major job area being performed by rehabilitation engineers that was not identified by the focus group. A total of 36 VR employees, 29 VR contractors, and six who did not specify their status responded to the questionnaire (out of 215 mailed out) for a return rate of 33%. Some individuals skipped portions of the questionnaire; in these cases, the questionnaires were used and the omitted sections were treated as missing data. There were very few responses in any of the other categories. In the Management/Administrative section, six respondents (five VR employees and one contractor) listed other tasks; in the Service Delivery category, two respondents (one VR, one contractor) listed other tasks; in the Community Service category, one VR employee listed an other task; in the Training category, one VR employee listed an other task. Under the Research category, no other tasks were listed. Additionally, the major job category Other was not used by a single respondent. As illustrated by figure 1, over half of rehabilitation engineers time is spent in service delivery (54% overall; 50.6% for VR employees; 60.8% for contractors). Management/ Administrative tasks require the second largest amount of time (17.1% overall; 19.2% for VR employees; 11.4% for contractors). Training is next, at 12.9% overall (13.3% for VR employees, 12.1% for contractors). This is followed by Community Service (8.9% overall; 11.3% for VR employees; 6.8% for contractors) and Research (5.9% overall; 4.5% for VR employees; 7.5% for contractors). Even though none of the respondents utilized the Other major job category to specify any tasks, respondents stated that they performed other duties 1.2% of their time (1.1% VR employees, 1.4% contractors) overall.

Without exception, rehabilitation engineers indicate d that they need more time to devote to all of their job tasks. In all job task categories, VR employees and contractors stated that the importance of the task transcended the amount of time they spent doing the task. While all tasks were stated to be more important than the time spent doing the task, some of the time deficits were greater than others. The most notable time deficits were as follows:

DISCUSSION

Upon initial inspection of the data, there are two areas that are worthy of note. First, it seems that the instrument is an accurate compilation of the job duties of persons who function as rehabilitation engineers, both as VR employees and as VR contractors. The second item of interest is the fact that all of the tasks in the instrument were found to be more important than the time available to perform them by the respondents. In developing the questionnaire, the researchers felt that there would be some areas that were annoyance tasks (i.e., tasks that the rehabilitation engineer routinely performed, but which the engineer felt should be performed by some other staff person, or not at all). However, this was not the case on any task listed on the questionnaire. While there are some differences (between VR employees and contractors) in specific job task areas, the overall picture is the same all of the duties listed on the questionnaire are important tasks for rehabilitation engineers. They currently perform these tasks; they feel that they are all important to the degree that they should be devoting more time to all of them; and they didn t list a significant number of tasks in the other categories. This would seem to indicate that the instrument would be an appropriate resource for the development of a comprehensive job description for a rehabilitation engineer, whether the engineer works for VR or is an outside contractor.

REFERENCES

1. Attigupam, P.M. (1994). Rehabilitation Engineers in Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies: A Profile. Proceedings of the RESNA 94 Annual Conference, (pp. 24-26), Nashville, Tennessee.

2. Flynn, C.C. (Ed.) (1994). Rehabilitation Technology Services in Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies Survey. West Columbia, SC: Center for Rehabilitation Technology Services.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Center for Rehabilitation Technology Services (CRTS) is part of the SC Vocational Rehabilitation Department. Support for this work has been provided through the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C. as part of the rehabilitation engineering research center grant #H133E20002- 96.

Neil F. Lown Center for Rehabilitation Technology Services SC Vocational Rehabilitation Department 1410-C Boston Avenue West Columbia, SC 29170