Meeting & Agendas

Keri opened by welcoming everyone to the Eastview Campus. For those of you that are new to the process we have our advisory board meeting annually. With our programs, we tend to have them in January. We have experimented with all different times of the year and this is a good time for us because we do not have students right now our students start next week. The advisory committee meeting serves as a way to discuss the program, curriculum, and be invested in our student’s success.

a. 2017 Completers - HSA/Tech Prep -37 started, 37 completed - 100% completion rate b. 2017 Completers - Traditional- 57 started, 56 completed - 98% completion rate c. ASCP Board of Certification Results: PHB_ASCP_ExamStatistics i. 2017 Graduates: 8 took and passed ii. Our 3- year pass rate is 90%

2017- 5 Needle sticks (1 dirty/4 clean) a. Clean needle sticks primarily occurred while uncapping needle. b. This number has improved in the last two years as we have done additional instruction on the use of butterflies.

For any rotation that the students do they complete a site survey. If there are any major issues Keri contacts the site to inform them what the student saw. The links are located on the agenda and you can look over them and if there are issues, questions or anything you can contact Keri.

Keri discussed a. On-Site clinical. Input is needed to determine the specific skills common to all clinical laboratories to focus on during on-site clinical. Would like to set up focus groups or conduct brief surveys with appropriate ACC faculty to set curriculum and standards of practice for commonly performed tests. b. Need input from clinical practitioners on competencies established at ACC for both on-site and off-site (in the actual clinical laboratory) to establish entry-level practices. c. Competency assessment is routine in the clinical laboratory. ACC wishes to mirror these activities and need input. Which skills need to be observed? Which skills are evaluated based on results obtained with remediation and additional practice offered if the skill is failed? Which part of a competency are """"""""essential"""""""", resulting in a failure, versus requiring remediation but allowed to pass?

Discussed the handouts that were in the folders which is materials needed and information about donations we accept. Review the clinical competencies. Discussed molecular diagnostics program and looking for new students.

What can be done about the number of students and knowing the difference between CE and Health Science Students? Keri stated that health science only has students doing clinical in the spring from March – May, in the fall from October – 1st week of December, Summer traditional Phlebotomy students in mid-July to beginning of August, Health Science Academy students cannot start clinical until after they have graduated from high school therefor we have phlebotomy students in clinical from June – August.

Keri Brophy- Martinez: MLT/PLAB Department Chair Anna Mullins: Lab Manager for Texas Oncology for South Austin, Hays, Bastrop, and San Marcos Kathy Boccieri: Lab Manager for Texas Oncology for Midtown, Cedar Park, Seton Williamson, and Marble Falls Shannon McCreadie : President of the MLT student organization Nancy Walters: Assistant Dean for Health Sciences Sami Omrani : ADC QA Manager Carolyn Ragland: ACC Faculty Stephanie Thayer: Assistant for MLT, OTA, PTA, PLAB Cynthia Melendez: Full time at the Heart Hospital of Austin, Adjunct Faculty of ACC Debbie Burns: Senior Lab Assistant for the MLT Program Kathy Park: ACC Faculty for MLT and PLAB Claudia Gonzales: Full Time Faculty for MLT Wanda Bowers: Lab Coordinator at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center South Austin Kimberly Mathers: Lab Manager at South Austin Medical Center Yvette Ysa-Ramirez: Adjunct Faculty for PLAB Lois Wagner: Adjunct Faculty for PLAB

New Chair: Kathy Boccieri Vice Chair: Kim Mathers Secretary: Wanda Bowers

One of the most important items on the agenda is getting feedback from our accreditation visit we had back in November. When they come to do the accreditation there is a process leading up to it. Keri had submitted a self-study report back in February in 2017, they came in, and did the actual site visit the 17th and 18th of November. The first day they were here were interviews with Department Chair, Dean, Current students, Clinical Affiliates, Graduates. The fabulous news is that for the first time in history that Keri knows of both of MLT and PLAB came out 100% clean with no concerns or deficiencies. They had nothing that they could get us on. The accreditation board does not meet until March and so we will not have our official paper letting us know how many year we will be accredited for before our next visit until after the meeting, but the site inspectors that came were throwing around 8-10 years. Once we get the notification Keri will send out email to everybody that she can in the clinical field.

We will be having our Health Science Open House on February 24 here at Eastview. Started the open house to promote our professions and our departments, to invite clinical people who wanted to know to come in and look at our labs and the equipment that the health science department offer. Another reason is to help keep recruitment coming into all of our programs. Most departments will have a mix of current student and faculty in to assist interested students. All labs will be open so anyone could walk through and ask any questions that they would like answered. One current student in MLT, met Keri at the last open house in 2017. The open house is meant to do many things and Keri invited the board member to come by and look.

TACLS- Texas Association of Clinical Lab Science- an offshoot of the national organization- Here at ACC we are not super active but our partners at Texas State are. Keri is going to do her best to promote it when she can if you have any employee that need CEs or professional development type of things than they might be interested in going to TACLS this year. It is in El Paso this year and moves around every year. She provided the link on the agenda.

Every three years ACC requires us to do and instructional review. Similar to accreditations but with more of a college focus. There is a lot of crossover between the two. This year Keri did the SWOT a little differently than she has done in the past. For those of you that do not know what SWOT stands for it is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats; you have probably heard of the terminology before. Keri sent out a survey to random people out in the clinical world, graduates, and to the faculty as a way to narrow down the talking points. Keri’s experience has been that when she is trying to bring everybody together and when we try to openly talk about these topics it becomes complete silence. We are going to talk about each of the areas and if anyone has an opinion or an additional comment please feel free to give it. These are things that Keri will need to report to the college. Our last SWOT was done in 2014 and a lot can change in three years. Not as many people completed the survey that had in 2014. Strength: Some things that Keri has found alarming. Many of the things pertaining to faculty have changed: Dedication Experience Forward thinking Enthusiasm Flexibility These topics were in the 75%-80% range in 2014; on this last survey conducted, we are looking at 40%-55% range. Keri does not agree with everything on this survey but there may be things that she does not know about. If you have any input, we would like to hear it. Unfortunately, these topics are more open when it come to the definition of them. Keri asked the group if anybody had any thoughts as to why the range has gone down almost 50%. Carolyn Ragland: In the population that you surveyed did they have the same interaction with the faculty that the 2014 group did? Keri Brophy-Martinez: The survey was sent out faculty, current students, graduates, clinical affiliates. Surveys that were sent out were sent to people whose email addresses Keri had. The techs that are working might not have been the ones that received the emails. Asked group if there were any other strengths that they would like to share. Nancy Walters: It is a strength that there was such a wonderful accreditation visit: that there were no recommendations and no deficiencies. Kim Mathers: Putting students where they need to be and fitting them in the right environment. Keri Brophy-Martinez: My goal is that for every student that comes through for MLT that I do my best to get all students into one hospital rotation, one clinic rotation, and one other type of rotation. I do that on purpose because it is not fair for a student that is a weaker student to not have the experience of being able to see for themselves. I try to match students to sites, not only by skill level but also are they going to be a good match for that environment. Weaknesses: In 2014, many comments were brought up about the MLT or Clinical Lab Science Profession in general. There is not enough recognition. There is not enough publicity. On the recent survey, a lot of the recognition issue has improved. She is encouraged to see that many people who did the survey seemed to believe because they had more positive responses than where we were in 2014. Faculty weaknesses based off the survey: Email and phone response times Time to develop course curriculum College wide demands Keri asked faculty for comments. Does the faculty agree that these are still weaknesses? Agreements of yes Discussed time limitations and amount of changes health science goes through compared to courses like English and history. Opportunities and threats’: Threats Lack of professional respect and prestige Lack of program exposure Lack of state licensure Competition for clinical sites- Ongoing, will be discussed in Clinical scheduling Advancement on automation Resistance of change of ACC faculty Enrollments Discussed steady enrollment numbers in MLT and troubling enrollment numbers in Phlebotomy. Discussed having to cancel one section of phlebotomy the previous semester. Discussed the two different Phlebotomy programs at ACC: CE and Credit. Discussed the difference between the two programs. Discussed changes in health science and the changes in enrollment into programs. Opportunities Offering CE opportunities Offering distant learning opportunities Variety in clinical sites-one of Keri’s goals this year is to get more clinical sites Faculty ties with students and graduates Encourage graduates to continue to CLS

Clinical for 2017-2018 have been extremely difficulty and we are not sure why that is. We have had a lot of movement with supervisors that were in place and are now gone. We have had issues with places that are now ran by other companies. Keri is always looking way of doing clinical scheduling that will be better for everybody. Asking for opinions about what can help with the scheduling. Keri is suggesting using google forms. Discussed google form and times. Keri will be working on a google form.

a. Number of Graduates - Summer 2017 - started with 20, 16 graduated b. 2017-2018 Cohort - Started with 22 students, currently have 16- including 1 distance learner c. 2018-2019 Cohort- expect a full class of 24 students d. ASCP Board of Certification Results: MLT_ASCP_ExamStatistics 1. 2017 Graduates: From the 16 graduates- 12 passed BOC, and 4 have not taken. 2. Our 3-year pass rate is 86% Discussed the certification exam and the result sheets. Any score over 400 is passing and the maximum is 999. If anyone scores under 400 she marks them on the sheet so that she can see where students seem to be having the problems.