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.”

In the latest ACOTE council meeting in October, there were still a lot of unanswered questions about the professions entry points. The discussion have been, from an OT standpoint to eliminate the Masters and only have the Doctorate for OT. That looks like the path they are still going forward with. The other part to the entry points were for the OTA programs. We have always had only one entry point for the OTA program, through a lot of discuss and research from stakeholders over the past two years it was decided that the profession needed to move the PTA to a Bachelor entry point and that mandate came down earlier this year. It met with a lot of contention from community colleges providing to smaller, rural communities. Due to the uproar, there was a hold put onto this decision, in the meantime apparently what did not occur was that in the process of moving the mandates forward the accreditation body did not run through the representative assembly so now the entire mandate has to go through the representative assembly. It is on the calendar for the representative assembly in the Spring and they have to put together an ADHOC committee that has to reach out to stakeholders again to find out what this profession needs. We are expecting answers in the Spring. An updated strategic plan is currently in progress. Included will address the ACOTE upcoming changes to standards and potential entry points. There are new 2018 ACOTE standards that have been adopted this Fall so we will be updating our standards. They may change again with the results of the entry point changes. We are currently working on the 2019 interim report, it has been 5 years since our last accreditation. The report is due April 15th. The report focuses on the administrative side of running the program, strategic planning, faculty assessments, program review, and fieldwork. All course syllabi will also need to be uploaded to ensure all curriculum standards are being addressed. After the report is submitted we will move on to updating to the 2018 standards. The biggest change seems to be on the action verbs being used for many of the standards.

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 that started with last year’s graduates, they 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. Renee: “What are we doing as a college with that? As we are still seeing this decline and not meeting this goal and still admitting 20 students a year.” Estrella asked Pat for her comments. Each program has to monitor their own workforce because it is not the same for each program. Are you seeing that the workforce is hiring more OTs verses OTAs because of reimbursements? Estrella: I would say yes and yes, asked clinicians for their comments. From one perspective the OTs are just doing paperwork and all treatments done by the OTA. 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 area 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 are several companies in limbo and that are closing. “The school district is still growing and they are trying to figure out how to handle it and how to expand.” They are also more graduates going into home health right out of the program because that is where the many of the job openings are. We do not recommend that students got straight into home health and we try to stress that to the students. Committee Member: “As a past student coming out of the program “going into home health I kind of wish I had more direction with to look for with a supervising OT and how that company helps their supervising OT supervise their OTA. There are some companies who will not pay for supervising trip for direct supervision. and so then it is hard to get an OT to come do it or they are going to be paid for it and you do not. How does that work?” Pat: We see that with the LVN students. The nursing board does not recommend that students work in Home Health straight out of school. There is one particular home health company that recruits heavily, but they are taught the support. We will be strategizing on how to integrate home health into our fieldwork program. NBCOT outcomes: All students who graduated in 2017 and 2018 passed the national exam on the first attempt.

We have seen a decline in applications again. In 2018, we only received 42 applications and in 2017, we only received 66 applications. We are monitoring any significant trends or issues coming to us from the community or students that are barriers. We suspect the reason is a mixture of online classes offered, the current job market, and the current or upcoming potential changes in entry points. Pat: Suggested exploring Hybrid options for some of the classes. Renee: We have one Hybrid and two others that are not officially Hybrid because the online hours are less than 50%. The labs are what we cannot move to online. Amy: St. Catherine’s uses Genesis rehab for their lab component. That is something that we have the capability of doing here. We can do the lab component here without having to pay an outside resource to do it. However, use the people who want to educate. Estrella thinks it the time to start looking into it. Pat: Well and the technology that is available now to do online classes it not just: “here is you syllabus and here is your lecture”. The college is putting a big emphasis on distant education and they are doing things like quality matters. Securing fieldwork placements are a concern so we decided to stay at 20. Discussed reason why application and enrollment numbers are going down, discussing online classes and other options to make classes more accessible to students. Estrella thanked Amy for her tutoring and helping the students. There have been no changes to the admissions criteria.

There are no changes to the degree plan.

There has only been one new adjunct faculty member hired. She has been orientating this semester, she will be picking up the additional work to balance all work schedules together. The new employee is: Deanna Gonzalez-Nesmith, OTR

We have four new Pediatric sites and two new rehab sites added to our fieldwork program.

We have started some new opportunities this past year. We have started with an interpersonal teaching/learning class with St. Augustine. Kim has been working on this. Kim: We are combining our OTA students with their OT students and practicing role delegation. We found that not many OT students understood the role of a COTA and what they can do or what they know. It was fun and our students were very proud of themselves because they were able to share their knowledge with the OT students. The OT students learned a lot from our student and acknowledged it. The whole thing was very positive and St. Augustine wants to write a paper on it. The downfall is that we can only do this once a year and St. Augustine wants to do it every semester. It was completed as fieldwork and on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We recently learned that Baylor Scott and White is no longer hiring assistants and no longer taking OTA or PTA students. The other opportunity for us to explore is how get creative with meeting 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.