**3.1 Mutual understanding and good cooperation within a multidisciplinary team**

Biomedical engineering integrates various technical disciplines, but it also assumes the presence of an engineer in every situation where medicine is being practiced. Therefore, one of the principal requirements is the ability to work in a multidisciplinary team, in which common ideas, values and behavioral patterns have a very practical implication influencing the emergency response, adaptation to conditions of any healthcare mission and a sense of intellectual curiosity about technological development. In such teams, various professional learning-related particular interests are present, and mutual understanding instead of competition is the key to success.

The organizational culture of the School created by all workers from various departments of the School fosters an emphasis on teamwork and intercommunication, especially in the group of specialists from various fields. Common understanding, personal involvement and dedication constitute an essential pattern of a learning organization. In a team which includes a physician, nurse, pharmacist and an engineer, the effective use of knowledge and skill by separate persons is dependent on the mutual understanding within each person's field of competence. In addition, the cooperating specialists motivate each other and thus create novel solutions resulting from the synergy of various experiences.

### **3.2 Striving for technical excellence**

Working in a team with a doctor, a nurse and a pharmacist, the biomedical engineer is responsible for all technology-related ideas, and is perceived as someone capable of solving all problems in his or her area of responsibility; all of this combined may become a source of abnormal stress. Moreover, the support of life, as no other application of technology, has a direct relation to the human being, his or her health and happiness and to fundamental values. Consequently, an assumption of excellence distinguishes a biomedical engineer from engineers of other specialties. Furthermore, since technology is currently responsible for the ever greater efficiency and effectiveness of medicine, it can also be blamed for any adverse effects of medical procedures.

Striving for excellence at all levels of the implementation of detailed goals of achieving cooperation and suggesting technical solutions to problems is a typical characteristic of the organizational culture. In addition to tasks involving the implementation of educational programs (curricula and syllabuses), one of the School's main objectives is to transmit standards. Thus, when the School becomes an archetype or model of the future workplace and the lecturers employed by the School are expected to set an example of how excellence should be achieved, the care taken to provide a proper form of the organizational culture is a *sine qua non* educational requirement (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1996). If the future graduate student acquires adequate competences during the course of his or her studies, their position will be determined in a multidisciplinary team in real situations in health services. Organizational rules and regulations that are in force in the School, which employs lecturers from various faculties, make the presentation of the lecturers' various roles in the learning process easier by taking into account the person's specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. This approach has been used to make an analogy pointing to the technical excellence of an engineer as a basic argument supporting his or her key role in the multidisciplinary team employed in health services.

Fig. 7. Students discussing laboratory projects (2008).
