Meeting & Agendas

Attendees: Teresa Gardner, Jeff Hayes, Denita Lyons, Frank Urias, Tim Lacy, Rebecca Butler, Terri King, Robert Hartman, Eric Fisher, Andre Lugo, Johnny Campbell, Kenny Schnell, Jim Swisher, Elizabeth Holiman, ACC: Robyn Richter, Eileen Klein, Steven Villavicencio, Pauline VanMeurs, Dr. Duke Kimbrough and Rebecca Brock

a. Annual Report i. Budget ii. Technologies iii. Program Resource Survey- for the Advisory committee Library Resources

Motion to adjourn, seconded- motion passes, none opposed.

a. In house and registry pass rates EMT- Since August 1, 2012, 138 EMT students passed the National Registry on the first attempt . ACC EMSP has a 100% pass rate, 76% is the national rate for the first attempt in the first 3 quarters of 2013. The ACC-EMSP “ above pass” rate percentages for airway, cardiology, trauma , medicine and Ops are between 91% - 79%. The state topic percentages for “above passing” are between 50-55%. So we are doing very well. AEMT- 12 students took and 11 passed the exam at the AEMT level, pass rate is 91.6% . Topic levels are not shown because we have had less than 50 students take the exam. This is not a popular exam to take because it is expensive and most students will be finished in three semesters, so they wait and spend their money on the paramedic exam. Paramedic – Since August 1, 2012, 45 attempted the NR exam and 44 passed on the first attempt; one student took the test twice .The program pass rate is still at 100%. The ACC-EMSP “above pass” rate percentages for airway, cardiology, trauma, medicine and ops are between 94-82%; national “above pass” rates are in the 50th percentile; state percentiles are in the upper 40’s.

Fall 2012 – We had 108 students in the upper level program. Fall 2013 – 26.8% reduction in enrollment. Dr. Klein has stated that there is a reduction in enrollment is college wide with the Health Science enrollment being down overall by 4.1%.Our attrition and graduation rates have not changed significantly. The numbers for the last three Fall starts are as follows: Fall 2011– 28, Fall 2012 – 23, Fall 2013 – 18 students .This is a net reduction of 35.8%. When comparing the amount of students doing the info session to the students that apply and accept enrollment into our Paramedic Program we find that 85% of students that complete our online information session actually apply for the program. But we have also noted that only 60% of students that do the info session and are accepted in the program actually start the program. The reasons seem to be: -Lack of Financial aid seems to be the reason that students who apply, decline the offer for admittance. -Emergency Medical and Services Training ( EMST) company is also in competition for some of our students. The program is shorter and the admissions requirements are a little more condensed.

a. Curriculum Changes i. EMSP 2338- Operations class is now fully hybrid. We are running two sections of about 15 students. With the exception of 3 classroom lectures and the final, all lectures, class discussion, and quizzes are completed on-line. Every week the students in each section meet for a 2 hour lab either on Monday or Wednesday. The instructors are telling me that they may need to tweak a few things for next semester, but so far it is going very well. ii. EMSP 2352- Research is working toward hybrid, we are hopeful that by Spring 2014 we will be able to designate it as hybrid. iii. Summer classes: In the Fall of 2008 we began having all classes every semester except for a few in the summer. The only classes not scheduled for summer were Ops, Research and PHTLS. The last two summers have been particularly difficult; with this last summer being extremely painful. Our upper level, 4th semester students are in the classroom from 8 am – 5:30 with a ½ hour break for lunch. Learning this way is not educationally sound and teaching this way is challenging. Clinicals for both 4th semester students( 189 hours) and our and 5th semester students ( 240 hours ) must be completed in about 8 weeks. Assigned Field Training officers ( FTOs) take the students and we must have them with the same preceptor at least 90% most of the time. We had to request help this summer from WILCO because ATCEMS did not have enough preceptors to move the graduate students through in 8 weeks. This fast pace strains the students and the providers we use in the clinical area. Our training officers work very hard to take care of our students but they need vacations and leaving is detrimental to learning continuity. Over half the EMSP faculty take a one-half summer contract which makes teaching continuity a little challenging. So we are requesting to move back to a more reasonable schedule of teaching only 1st, 2nd and 3rd semester courses in the summer along with our two night time EMT courses and a hybrid daytime EMT course that I will discuss in a moment. A motion was made by Kenny Schnell, seconded and questions were asked, motion was passed, none opposed. iv. Dr. Klein is currently working on a Memorandum of Understanding with Texas A&M University ( TAMU) . If the college and TAMU agree we will hold an EMT course for their second to third year medical students. This is to help them with clinical readiness, assessment and upper level airway management. We will bring on at least one cohort of 15 with a max of two cohorts. The course will be hybrid with most lectures on-line and a few such as Medical Legal, OB, Packaging and Hazardous materials completed in the classroom. These students will likely not take the registry exam. In the event that this does not pan out, we will simply make this course into a day-time EMT Basic course. v. This fall we started another Tuesday/Thursday EMT class on the Eastview campus to accommodate requests of those turned away previously. We were carrying 60 students total for both campuses, this semester we started 85 EMT students. vi. Admission requirement changes for our students……. Pauline State legislation impacts our incoming students. Previously we were able to require certain scores before entering the program. Now the state is requiring that we use TSI requirements for assessing the readiness of the students before entering the program. We can no longer use any other test to ascertain student readiness for the program, but we can use a test as a tool for advising students. We are researching the use of the FISDAP or HOBET exam to advise students on their readiness to enter our program. vii. Senate Bill 497…..Dr. Klein Discussion of Senate Bill 497 and discussion of the impact on our graduate students. The bill as it is written will limit the credit hours of the Associate Degree to 60 hours. The program currently has 69 credits in the Associate Degree coursework, fifteen ( 15) of those are core courses that cannot be removed. Dr. Klein requested the committee’s opinion on the bill and the change they believe it might bring to program graduates. She is also requesting a letter from the committee or from the interested groups to send to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board ( THECB). Mr. Hays stated that a discussion of the Senate Bill will take place during the November GETAC meeting. His suggestion is to query the medical directors and get input from them to include in the comments to THECB.

Benchmarking: While CoAEMSP , is still in some discussion about numbers of what is required for students, we are going to begin benchmarking this semester. Benchmarking means that we will set a number on types of patients, ages, skills and so on. These numbers once set will be a target goal for the students and required for them to graduate. On your handout you have the numbers we will seek for our students. They have the numbers divided into clinical ( hospital type clinicals) and Field clinicals. In parenthesis beside the topic are the number set by the EMS standards. Please also note that while Co-A has stated in their guidelines that simulation and laboratory could be used to accomplish this goal, there is not a place to put laboratory numbers on their G/H appendix. Our numbers would increase substantially if that line were considered. While we looked at all of our numbers since January of 2010, because of some of the changes made in topics and in our own paperwork we really looked the most at what has taken place this year. The numbers this year are climbing simply because of the topic name changes and student instructions. Motion to accept the numbers as written for Student Benchmarks: motion seconded and passed, none opposed. Motion to allow faculty to make the final decision for student disposition until the program feels the numbers are in the right place. Motion seconded and passed, none opposed. ii. NNew Equipment in house: We received Perkins money for our new Junior Sim a new model that just came out in 2012, that has the same features as the adult manikins. It can be monitored from the control room, so high fidelity simulation can be done in the classroom.

i. Discussion of new equipment on units ii. Williamson County has 2 new CPR devices on their units and will begin using ventilators. iii. ATCEMS is currently testing a supra-glottic device called I-Gel. It would only be used in cardiac arrest, Zoll monitors are coming and power load stretchers.

Brilinta, and Levophed, are new. The committee request that we have our students understand a wide variety of drugs. Due to shortages if one is not available we will use another.

a. When we send our students to ride on your units, they should have a basic idea of protocol. In order for a student to register for a clinical course, they had to have taken a test over drug indications and contraindications. As we expand the amount of facilities, it is going to be harder to implement testing of the various singular provider protocols and drugs used. We will instead start to implement medication testing in our clinical courses so that they will have a better grasp as they enter the clinical environment. If you have some preferences of things that you want our people to know, let us know and we will implement those items into our tests. b. Faculty ask about the preparation of our students to use rapid sequence intubation. Advisory board requested that the program teach but not test the sequence.