By Ron Kruzel, MA, CAE, CST, FAST, ARC/STSA Executive Director Greetings to all, and I hope your summer is off to an amazing start! For two long years, our education community has learned to live in the new reality of a world with COVID, responding with amazing agility and resilience and adapting in a moment’s notice to the ever-changing landscape [...]
By Chris Ahearn, AAS, CST, and featuring Dr. Josef F. Schmid, III With an early 2030 launch date planned for mankind’s first mission to Mars, NASA flight surgeons and their teams have been hard at work. With 240 days between liftoff and touchdown, crews onboard are susceptible to all manner of human maladies. From headaches to bone resorption, acute appendicitis [...]
By ARC/STSA Accreditation Team As you celebrate the success of student graduations and look forward to the well-deserved summer break, we wanted to remind you about several accreditation documents with an August 1, 2022, effective date; including the new Standards and Guidelines for the Accreditation of Educational Programs in Surgical Technology (Standards), the Core Curriculum for Surgical Assisting, 4th edition [...]
The ARC/STSA is proud to announce its 2022 scholarship recipients. This year, ARC/STSA awarded 10 student scholarships of $500 each and one $1,000 educator scholarship. Join us in celebrating these accomplished recipients, shared below, and stay tuned for more information about their stories throughout the summer. You can also learn more about the recipients on the scholarship page of our website. [...]
By Amy Broussard, AAS, CHL, CSFA, CRCST, CST, FAST, and Eboni Saurage, EdD, CST, FAST The Association of Surgical Technologists (AST) held its 52nd Surgical Technology Conference in New Orleans, LA, on June 3-5, 2022. The conference drew more than 1,200 enthusiastic active and associate members which included many educators, students and recent graduates. We reached out to learn how [...]
What is AccredX and what makes it different from other conferences? AccredX is the first annual conference designed to support our 400+ surgical technology and surgical assisting programs with accreditation-focused continuing education. AccredX offers hands-on workshops, proven program management strategies, and best practices in surgical technology and surgical assisting education, to provide educators with the necessary tools to achieve and [...]
ARC/STSA is proud to celebrate our golden anniversary this year – 50 years of accreditation and education excellence. This year we’ll be looking back at the last five decades — from our humble beginnings in December 1972 as the Joint Review Committee on Educational Programs for the Operating Room Technician (JRC-ORT) to today, as we provide national accreditation services for [...]
ARC/STSA would like to congratulate the surgical technology programs that have recently received awards of initial and continuing accreditation. Please join us in acknowledging the dedication and hard work it took for these programs to reach these critical milestones. Surgical Technology Initial Accreditation Award: Ozarka College, Mountain View, AR Surgical Technology Continuing Accreditation Award: Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC Daytona [...]
The ARC/STSA wishes to extend a special thank you to Helga Olson, MA, MSc., CSA, CSFA. Olson served from 2016–2022 on the ARC/STSA Board of Directors – Subcommittee on Accreditation for Surgical Assisting (SASA), and we are so grateful for her volunteerism and six years of tireless service contributed. Olson, pictured left, earned her Bachelor of Science in Counseling Psychology [...]
By Rebecca Hall, MS, CRCST, CSA, CST, FAST Recognized for the sixth consecutive year as a tech-savvy college by the Center for Digital Education, Delta College incorporates technology to improve curriculum delivery and service across its programs. Following this tradition, our surgical first assistant and surgical technology programs were the first in the state of Michigan to use the Anatomage [...]
