In this keynote address, AARC President Brian Walsh will update the audience on the goals, priorities, and strategic focus of the Association that he set forth when he took office in 2017. Attend this presentation and better understand where we were and where we currently are specific to the three domains of focus (safety, quality, and value) that have served, and will continue to serve, as the Association's road map during during the remainder of Dr. Walsh's presidency. This is your opportunity to hear from our president regarding topics that are important to you!

The days of obtaining reimbursement for every procedure, test, and intervention are only distant memories. Counting "procedures" and "billable units of service" are no longer of any value to administrators, consultants, medical staff, and others. How do you accommodate the demands placed upon you and, more importantly, proactively respond to these demands? This presentation will address how to create a value proposition for a change initiative, identify key stakeholders and decision-influencers, determine performance metrics and goals, and develop a communication strategy to secure approval of a change initiative, while reinforcing your value as an RT leader. Attendees will receive a template to utilize in "making the case" for their role as a health care leader and the services provided by respiratory therapists.

The 360 student pre-clinic evaluation uses standardized patients, faculty, and self-evaluations of clinician-patient communication skills, patient assessment skills, and patient comfort during the patient assessment. This comprehensive evaluation provides feedback to the student for self-awareness communication and patient assessment skills.

This lecture will share the process for training the standardized patients for participating in the pre-clinical evaluation and the method for evaluating the students.

As a push for higher education and degree attainment is being encouraged this is creating a new population of RTs with a skill set positioning them for new opportunities. Career advancement is pushing respiratory therapy in new directions but putting the department manager in a challenging position. This presentation looks at ways for managers and directors to attract and retain respiratory therapists.

The AARC's goal for 80% of Respiratory Therapists to earn or pursue a bachelor's degree by 2020 elicits conversations in all facets of the respiratory profession. Growth requires a thorough investigation of potential roadblocks and development of plausible solutions to overcome obstacles. This presentation shares some of the discovered fears, viable solutions to overcome, and examples of success realized when venturing through a career pathway.

Given the continued focus on reducing unplanned readmissions, RT leaders need to find new and innovative ways to impact the care of our COPD patients. While the current Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) was created to address 30-day readmissions, many expect the timeline to increase in the future. This presentation will demonstrate how to decrease readmissions in that 30-day period as well as sustain this positive impact by utilizing a comprehensive quality assurance program.

In 2015 the AARC set a goal that 80% of respiratory therapists (by the year 2020) will have earned or will be pursuing a bachelor's degree. One viable pathway is for graduates of associate degree respiratory therapy programs to attend a degree advancement program to earn their BSRC degree.

There are countless books and articles suggesting that "their way" is the best method to select the best candidates. Of these, which methods are based on evidence and which methods should we relegate to antiquated practices? This presentation will illustrate how to select the BEST FIT candidate for your department.

As health care moves from a hospital-based, provider-centric model to a community-based, patient-centric model of care RT managers must develop expertise in changing management techniques. A change strategy map is an excellent way for managers to map the terrain, identify stakeholders and their level of support, evaluate potential resistance, and influence supporters to ensure project success.

The presenter will describe the process for revision of the CoARC Standards and present proposed changes to the Standards. Time will be allotted for questions and comments from members of the audience.

Clinical educators and program faculty all have a need to ensure students have appropriate affective behaviors and professional behaviors. This presentation is designed to help participants develop defensible affective domain assessments that will help ensure the delivery of quality respiratory care.

This presentation will provide viewpoints on curriculum related to an associate degree graduate deciding on the type of bachelor's degree completion program to pursue. Some options have more professional coursework versus others that have more generalist or health science focus with courses in leadership, management, etc.

While EMRs offer benefits in several domains, many clinicians are frustrated with the complexity and additional time they require. Electronic documentation, as well as searching for documentation entered by other health care professionals, consumes more time than paper documentation and, in some cases, makes it actually more difficult for each discipline to see what other disciplines are doing. This presentation shows how to design your respiratory therapy workflow within your EMR to allow your respiratory therapists to spend more time with their patients than "in the chart" and to allow other disciplines to access the RT care plans.

Follow the presenter as she defines "physician supervision" from the regulatory perspective and shares why knowledge about this is a "must know requirement" if you plan to expand your RT scope of practice to function at the top of your license. The presenter will share tools to use to ensure compliance that can be used to gain buy in for role expansion from your administrators.

You've had a fantastic forum and soon will be returning home with lots of new ideas for your professional and personal growth. The big question is, how will you get to these "ITs" or "Important Things" when you already have a crazy busy schedule? Fortunately, all you have to do it think like a gardener. And the best part… you only have to remember four simple words to move your ITs from idea to reality.

When was the last time your protocols or guidelines were modified to match best practices or evolving patient population? Refinement allows clinical protocols to remain applicable to the continuously changing care environment with new priorities and rules. This presentation will describe how two protocol pathways were modified: one targeting lung protective ventilation strategies and the second on the application of respiratory therapy Assess and Treat protocols to a new patient population.

Course revision is an ongoing process. It occurs when content updates are necessary and with changes in textbook, class, delivery format, or instructor. When designing or revising course content, close attention must be given to alignment of the instructional materials. This lecture will highlight potential areas for misalignment and identify the need for alignment among program goals, course goals, unit objectives, and assessments.

The presentation will outline developmental and growth capabilities for RT managers and RT clinicians using our intrinsic global education and positioning as the platform for this development and growth. The discussion will include current and future challenges to health care in general and how RT leaders must play a major role. This presenter is a former RT who has made the leap to the C-Suite and will share his perspectives on how we are viewed by executives and what we must do to demonstrate, document, and communicate our value.

The jigsaw technique is a method of organizing classroom activities that makes students depend on each other to succeed. Attend this lecture to learn how to improve student motivation, promote cooperative learning, and increase their enjoyment of learning experiences.

Of the some 1300 Critical Access Hospitals there have been 82 rural hospital closures across the U.S. since 2010. Could your hospital be next? Creativity and resourcefulness can contribute to the financial stability of your health care entity. See how wearing "many hats" is key to contributing so you do not become "the forgotten."

Online education is increasingly important in RT curricula. However, many educators would not include effective online course design among their strengths. Just as we use rubrics to assess the quality of students' work, the Quality Matters (QM) rubric can be used to evaluate a course and highlight areas for improvement. This lecture will present the course review process from the perspective of the educator as well as the QM peer reviewer.

The presenter will discuss ways to incorporate a research component into a curriculum. He will also discuss ways to include actual research projects like bench studies and human testing studies. Examples of how he and his students have performed over 60 student-led research projects and transitioned them into OPEN FORUM abstracts for the AARC Congress will be presented.

Human Factors Engineering (HFE) in health care is both a science and a practice. It discovers and applies information about human behavior, abilities, and limitations to the design of tasks, tools, technology, environment, and organization to jointly increase safety, quality, efficiency, and productivity. In 2000 the Institute of Medicine called on Human Factors Engineers to study the contributing factors of errors that were leading to so many preventable deaths in the U.S. health care system. Despite this plea, health care has trailed other industries that actually require HFE in their designs (e.g., DOD, DOT, DOE, NASA). This presentation describes the benefits of applying HFE to health care and presents several real-world examples from a children's hospital that employs Human Factors Engineering in an operational role.

The overall objective of Human Factors Engineering (HFE) is to reduce errors, fatigue, stress, and injuries at work while at the same time improving productivity, ease of use, safety, comfort, acceptance, job satisfaction, and quality of life. HFE meets its objectives by taking a proactive, systems approach to identifying, analyzing, and designing hazards out of the work system. A hazard is defined as a condition or set of circumstances that can cause harm or increase the risk of harm. HFE recognizes the complexity of health care and the importance of studying system interactions to understand errors and their contributing factors. Health care must push past the instinct to blame humans for events or accidents but rather take a HFE perspective to explain the system components that surrounded the human at the time of the event. This approach will help to create system interventions that will mitigate hazards - reducing the opportunities for errors - and be sustained over time.

Updates on issues important to the section will be discussed, with interactive dialogue on how the section chair and the AARC can better serve the Education Section and its members. This is your opportunity to influence the profession and network with your peers. All Summer Forum attendees are invited to attend.

For the profession of respiratory care, sustainable results depend upon the degree to which an organization's culture is aligned to specific guiding principles rather than depending solely on tools, programs, or initiatives. This lecture provides a framework that will guide collaboration between academia and health care employers and can facilitate and expedite that alignment.

The leadership of the AARC, ARCF, CoARC, and the NBRC will join attendees to discuss the latest professional, research, accreditation, and credentialing issues facing respiratory care.

The Jimmy A Young Memorial Lecture annually sponsored by the NBRC will share methods and results from the 2017 Study of Respiratory Therapists. Examination changes spurred by these results will be explained.

Updates on issues important to the section will be discussed, with interactive dialogue on how the section chair and the AARC can better serve the Management Section and its members. This is your opportunity to influence the profession and network with your peers. All Summer Forum attendees are invited to attend.

The presenter will share the fundamental components of the fellowship program and examples of projects effectively completed due to participation. She will illustrate the positive impact experienced by both front line staff and management in developing a team of RCPs who can effectively address clinical requests or changes in practice based on "expert opinion."

Respiratory care IS primary care! Best practices are now shifting toward "transitioning" patients through the health care system rather than merely "discharging" patients from the acute care hospital and RTs must be prepared for the new paradigm. Learn how respiratory therapists can add value providing services as part of a primary care clinic model. The presenter will explain the process from pitching the idea to senior executives to creating the program all the way through operating the clinic.

An overview of how the brain learns and how factors such as exercise, sleep, and stress influence learning. Also discussed will be how visual stimulation improves learning. How to get and hold students' attention along with strategies to improve memory will also be presented.

Why do we have to make a change? As a health care leader are you frustrated every time you hear "This is the way we have always done it" or "Why change it if it's working?" As leaders it is our responsibility to establish the need for change and get others to agree in order to be successful. The presenter will discuss the importance of creating a sense of urgency, tips for getting this done, and the potential consequences of not doing so.

Healthcare workers are told by their administrators to not only deliver quality medical care but to ensure patients have a great experience while in the hospital. However, most healthcare workers have never been a patient themselves and fail to recognize things they do every day that directly relate to a poor patient experience. This presentation will follow the presenter as a case study to exam the use of common sense in medicine and will examine the importance of doing so from a hospital's financial perspective.