AARC President, Carl Hinkson, will kick off Summer Forum with a formal welcome to all attendees and will highlight the value of this year’s meeting.

Mentors and sponsors help others achieve career goals. In addition to fostering new skills, mentors and sponsors lend insights into unfamiliar work cultures. This panel presentation highlights the differences between these two professional development roles and how to create successful mentoring and sponsoring relationships. The panelists will discuss how their careers were impacted by mentors and sponsors and well as how they have helped guide future leaders.

At a time when respiratory care programs are being asked to recruit more students, they are also facing increasing budgetary and organizational change challenges. This session is designed to provide new or aspiring PDs, DCEs, and faculty with perspectives and ideas for strategically growing departmental resources while also elevating the visibility of the role of the respiratory therapist within their community. Emphasis is placed on using experiential learning initiatives and strategic relationships to facilitate growth, profiling simulation program development.

Retaining high performing staff is critical to the success of a respiratory care department. Increasingly, leaders are evaluating new and innovative tactics to engage and retain team members. This presentation will discuss the importance of (re)examining your influence on retention as a leader and explore ideas that could be beneficial to your team and department.

Respiratory care programs are routinely asked to do more with less. Programs are increasingly reliant upon adjunct faculty as lower enrollments and decreasing state-appropriated funding make hiring full-time faculty difficult. While these subject matter experts are excellent practitioners, research has demonstrated serious drawbacks when compared to full-time faculty within the educational environment. This presentation will discuss strategies for how to bridge this gap while at the same time growing the next generation of rockstar educators.

Like a classic car in mint shape, finding good employees can be difficult. And when you find an RT with the potential to be great, you want to do everything you can to retain them and keep them engaged. Managers who are challenged to motivate high performing employees must have the right tools in their toolbox in order to polish that RT’s potential and make them shine. Come to this lecture to learn more about the development and guidance required to keep an employee with hidden potential (aka: hot-rod) cruising down the dragstrip of greatness.

When it comes to cars, everyone wants a hot-rod, but sometimes you can end up with a lemon. Finding good employees can be difficult, and when you find one, you want to do everything you can to retain them and keep them engaged. As part of the automotive themed two-lecture symposium titled “What’s in Your FTE Garage?”, this lecture will be focused on the development and guidance required to keep an employee with unlimited potential (hot-rod) squarely in the fast lane.

Respiratory therapists are integral members of the health care team and must be able to effectively engage in collaborative practice to provide quality patient care. Interprofessional communication and teamwork are included in the CoARC accrediting standards and NBRC detailed content outline. The Respiratory Care Academy is the newest academy to join the National Academies of Practice (NAP) and will play an important role in advancing interprofessional health care to improve the health of individuals and communities. This presentation will provide an overview of the journey to establish a Respiratory Care Academy, highlight the significance of interprofessional education and collaborative practice in the profession, and discuss opportunities available for respiratory therapists in the new academy.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are terms at the forefront of so many discussions today. We may all have an idea of what is needed to create an inclusive environment, but where do we begin? What should we include when creating an inclusive environment? While we all have our own personal preferences and opinions, there are some key leadership skills that are needed in order to create an inclusive environment. Throughout this presentation, we will explore the “EACH” framework to refine our inclusive leadership skills and create an inclusive environment.

Have you struggled with re-engaging students with the transition back to in-person education? Hybrid and online learning environments changed the way students approached learning, and now students are struggling to reconnect themselves. One way to help students become engaged and energized is the integration of active learning strategies. This lecture will discuss active learning strategies that faculty and educators can utilize to jumpstart student engagement within different learning environments.

Expressive arts have been linked to greater presence, compassion, and resilience in health care practitioners. Two respiratory care educators share their experiences of collaborating with humanities/arts colleagues to introduce respiratory care students to the role that creativity can play in the respiratory curriculum. Educators will be exposed to a variety of applicable creative processes that are relevant to health professionals and human service practitioners while promoting interdisciplinary collaboration.

Fed up with students focusing on point values rather than the learning objectives? What if we stopped assigning point values and started emphasizing individual growth toward demonstration of skill mastery? This session will describe the concept of specifications grading, provide tangible examples of how to incorporate this practice, and discuss the potential benefits (and pitfalls) of reimagining and reestablishing the role of the instructor as the facilitator of learning, rather than the gatekeeper of grades.

Within our profession, the AARC Safe and Effective Staffing Guide (Guide) is recognized as the “gold standard” for accurately determining the clinical FTE needs to meet patient demand. However, it is not accepted by executives and consultants, and as a result, productivity metrics that have not been validated are utilized in the majority of RT departments. This interactive session will provide the essential information RT leaders need to educate and engage executives and consultants about the Guide, and ultimately gain approval for the Guide's use to determine clinical FTEs.

This interactive small group exercise will explain how attendees can go about educating and engaging executives and consultants about the Guide so that they can gain approval for the use of the Guide to determine clinical FTEs. The session will also cover how to embed the productivity system within their EMR.

All Summer Forum attendees and Exhibitors are invited to attend our annual “Block Party.” This is a time for you to have fun with fellow attendees, enjoy free drinks and food, play games, and win awesome prizes!