I do network engineering, at least that's the best I can explain it, it's not an IT job by any means I couldn't care less about IPs and firewalls, and I've had my hands in everything from trenching in the dirt to electronics manufacture. Part of why I like it is I can get into everything. My brother does mechanical, he worked in a factory for a decade and is some sort of consultant engineer now.

Neither exactly medical, but from my experience one tip I'd give you is a lot of the desk work can be mitigated by taking the initiative to be hands-on. Some engineers try to sit behind a desk too much, because they can. Select jobs that involve more hands-on or just as part of how you do things take the opportunity to be hands-on. It's been a long time since I've had my time micro-managed so if I want to go look/see/feel something to better understand or to better design it, I do it. I know my brother has the same experience, he's probably even more hands on. You may also have the opportunity to pick up projects that will be better served with a hands-on approach, I've done quite a few of those where the situation just requires it. I mean I expect this to be a little different in a medical field, since like the other said lab work, etc. but lab work is still hands on, so...

Depends. I’m currently in medical research and have worked with a few biomedical engineers. Most biomedical engineering is going to be like lab work. So honestly about 60% desk work for documentation. My personal recommendation is to get on something like LinkedIn to find a few biomedical engineers currently in field. For course load you will easily be able to transfer any biology and chemistry courses, but be prepared to have to take mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering. However if doing things like designing pacemakers, artificial organs, artificial limbs, etc sound like a worthy goal I would definitely look into it!

not sure its your wheelhouse but I wish this was my choice: https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/petroleum-engineer/salary

And as a bonus your very existence, and the fact you are making way more money than them, makes liberals seethe

I worked with some biomedical engineers in medical device R&D, and they tended to be Systems Engineers. That means they were responsible for defining the high-level functional, performance, quality, reliability, safety, etc... requirements at the system level and perhaps do some of the system decomposition (eg. determining if something is performed in software or using an electronic circuit). This involves some hands-on experimentation at the beginning of the project but transitions to a lot of requirement and documentation writing (someone else also mentioned writing a lot of documentation: notice a pattern?).

Most of the good Systems Engineers I've worked with have prior work experience in a specialized engineering field (mechanical, electrical, software, quality, etc...). One of the biomed guys I used to work with had previous experience as a Quality Engineer who did failure analysis of some sort of implantable medical device.

Since you mentioned not liking "desk work" I'll say that in if you're doing product R&D there are two phases of the product development lifecycle that are actually fun:

• The research phase, when you're given a problem you don't know how to solve and have to figure out how to do it. This also can be stressful because you have a bunch of people who don't have any understanding of the technical aspects of the job wanting to know when you'll be done, but it's the most creative and enjoyable part of the project IMO.
• The very end when everyone's happy you've just launched (particularly if you launched on schedule), just before you have to scramble to fix all the issues you're going to have the second it actually goes into production.

The rest of it for the most part is banging everything together until it works, drudgery, and paperwork. Not a hard and fast rule since you will run into problems you have to solve later on in the lifecycle, but you'll be a lot more constrained by other non-negotiable design decisions; so they usually won't be as fun to solve. Everyone has to decide if the fun (or the money) makes up for the bullshit.

I don't know about the schools, but many hospitals in European countries do not have vaccine requirements and are in dire need of medical staff (though obviously I don't know if that is also true of biomedical engineers).

Bear in mind that if you're going to interact with older and/or more vulnerable patients, masks and testing might be required.