Meeting & Agendas

Fred Alvarado, Advisory Chair, opened the meeting and Estrella thanked everyone for attending. They both introduced and thanked Pat Recek for attending. Estrella made sure everyone had agenda and reminded everyone what the purpose of the committee is and what the members bring to the program. “OTA Advisory board is comprised of recognized leaders in the field and Austin Community College Service Areas. Members convene regularly to offer their combined expertise to influence the curriculum structure and instructional methods of the OTA program.”

For the past 3-4 years, there has been a lot of discussion about eliminating the Masters OT level entry point and moving the Associates OTA to a Bachelor OTA level entry point. Last year through a lot of feedback from stakeholders and all of the program directors around the country ACOTE decided that they were going to eliminate the Master’s OT entry point and they will keep an Associates and Bachelor OTA and that we would have 10 years to make the necessary adjustments. This past August 2017 ACOTE made a sudden change. They sent an email to the program directors announcing they were going to eliminate the Associate OTA entry point and they were only going to have the Bachelors OTA entry point and the Doctorate OT entry point. There was a lot of upset and a lot of feedback because it was all of a sudden. Estrella attended a council meeting in October 2017 with ACOTE and all of the program directors and chairs around the country were participating in this annual council meeting. There was a lot of uproar and feedback, the standard was put in abeyance. At this point, they are going to take this year until August of next year to gather more information from stakeholders. What many of us predict and what ACOTE was vocal about was that the Bachelors' entry point is probably not going to go away; they are going to decide if they are going to keep the Associate entry point. In discussions with Pat Recek and Dr. Rhodes, our college is in a good position so much so that I can say at this point that it not impossible for us to move into a Bachelors program. There is a possibility only because in this last legislative session the college got approval to offer the RN to BSN program and an approval for 2-3 Bachelors programs. Estrella asked Pat if this is correct. Pat Recek: The coordinating board can grant up to three programs at certain community colleges Bachelors programs. Just because someone applies does not mean we will get it. There are struggles we have to deal with. Estrella Barrera: I feel fortunate that ours is not a “no way” ”forget it” picture. The accreditation board will make the final decision next August 2018. Decisions will be announced and then the programs will have 10 years to comply with the standards. In addition to this major potential shift, many standards are being realigned to either an Associate or Bachelor entry point. Now that they are getting rid of the Masters, there is a lot of shifting around. Estrella anticipates that however, it all turns out; there will be some changes even to existing standards. As of right now, the Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees have the same national certification exam and license. The distinctions between the changes for the two entry points have yet to be seen. The first attempt at changing the standards seemed like they were just “dumbing down” the Associate’s degree. There were a lot of comments and feedback during the council meeting to correct that. There is still a lot of work to be completed. More will unfold with the changes within the next year. Estrella will keep everyone updated, as more is known. One point that ACOTE did say is that our practice is shifting in certain aspects to community and that the assistants are going to be expected to have more anatomy and to be able to make higher risk decisions, under the supervision of an OTR, they want to position the profession into the future. They were also talking about doing a residency program for the doctorate OT level. They are looking at a medical model. There is still much to be determined.

Have had a good year and have met all of our program goals. The one to highlight is number 7, “Our new graduates will be employed in traditional emerging practices within 6 months.” We are monitoring this one very closely. We have seen a little bit of a trend starting with this years and last year’s graduates, they definitely were having difficulty finding “full-time” employment. What we are hearing back from them is that they are taking on several PRN jobs and connecting with an organization or company that they really want to get their foot in the door. Discussion moved to the trouble that companies and organizations were having with hiring full time OTAs. A major issue that they are having in the home health profession is that the OTs are unsure of how to work with or supervise the OTAs. Many of them do not trust the OTAs to take care of their patients. There was a discussion with Estrella and Marcia about Estrella meeting with the home health OTs to discuss the OTA education and working/managing them. All other program goals have been met. An updated strategic plan is currently in progress. Included will address the ACOTE upcoming changes to standards and potential entry points.

NBCOT gathers the information by the rule that the students have one calendar year to take the national exam. All students who graduated in 2017 passed the national exam on the first attempt. All of the students that graduated in 2016 passed the national exam on the first attempt except for one, that student passed on the second attempt.

We have seen a decline in applications again. In 2017, we only received 66 applications. We are monitoring the any significant trends or issues coming to us from the community or students that are barriers. The only changes made was when the TEAS exam was included in the application process might be influencing number of applications. Three to Four years ago we had so many qualified applicants we thought we could increase the number of enrollment from 20 students to 22 students. We figured out that we could do it, we redesigned our space, used other classrooms, and our classroom became strictly a lab. However, securing fieldwork placements are a concern so we decided to stay at 20. Advisory Committee provided feedback and agrees with the decision to stay at 20 admissions per year.

There are no changes to the degree plan

There have been two new faculty members hired. They have been orientating this semester, they will be picking up the additional work to balance all work schedules together. The new employees are: Pina Shah, OTR – Vast experience, currently working in the school system. Melissa Najarian, OTR – Experience in acute care and with pediatrics. Currently works at Dell Children's Hospital.

Wanted to get information and opinions from everyone there concerning how to expand our fieldwork partnership. Some of the thoughts and discussions that we have had as a faculty just in looking into the future and anticipating the challenges with reimbursements and the implications that it has for sites to take students. Recently Genesis Rehab was a partnership we were hoping to explore but we discovered that they changed for each student. That is their way to offset the cost to have a student there. We decided that we could not do that without passing the cost to the students but that might soon become a reality that we are going to have to start looking at. Genesis is coming into the area and building up long-term care facilities. Amy Anderson: They partnered with St. Catherine’s that is doing the online 16-month program, which is how they are doing the online COTA Program. They have a contract with Genesis to allow the students to do their lab and fieldwork through them. Estrella Barrera: The other opportunity for us to explore has to get creative on how to meet the objectives of fieldwork. When working and sharing ideas with St. Augustine they stated they do a lot of simulation for their fieldwork. There is not necessarily a standard that says simulation is done a particular way. ACC is working on having a simulation space for the Health Science Programs. We will need to start looking at the standards and curriculum and thinking outside the box. If we as a faculty and through feedback throughout advisory determine that perhaps our curriculum should include simulation, with strategic planning we could address that and enlighten of the movement that is happening in health care it could be wise of us to start looking at that. What would simulation look like in our fieldwork? The discussion bounced around different ideas on simulation and thoughts of what other schools do as their simulation.

Open discussions on ideas and options for the program. There was discussion of working with ACC on scouting new sites that could be used for fieldwork. Discussed how to help OTs and OTAs working together better. Discussed working with the child development department. Discusses and computerized soup note system that Amy is working on.