By Ron Kruzel, MA, CAE, CST, FAST
Welcome to summer 2023! You heard it right; we are halfway through the year! If you are like me, you are juggling a multitude of projects and catching up on a myriad of deadlines.
What a busy five months since January. The current challenges related to the workforce shortage are keeping us engaged in advocating for our profession and most importantly, for the accredited education of surgical technologists. As you all know, part of addressing the workforce shortage is educating the public about our profession. What is a surgical technologist? What do they do? Why are they so important?
Our community of educators continues to lead by example and inspire. You are Educators in Action—campaigning in your communities, having open conversations with your clinical partners, engaging with regulatory agencies, and using social media to inform the public.
ARC/STSA has been actively working, too, educating our mutual communities of interest on the critical role your graduates fill in the operating room. Throughout the spring, ARC/STSA representatives have presented on the importance of our accredited education programs at state assembly meetings in Arkansas, Iowa, North Carolina, and Washington. Our fall schedule is filling up with requests from additional states as well. ARC/STSA has represented our programs at national meetings such as CAAHEP, ABHES, ASA/NSAA and AORN. And Zoom meetings! ARC/STSA has facilitated a number of meetings with our education programs and their clinical partners on innovation in curriculum delivery and lab/clinical options to move students through programs with improved efficiency, and to improve program enrollments by enhancing school/clinical partnerships.
Our collective message is being heard. We are seeing improvement in program enrollments around the country, increasing interest from our clinical partners in collaboration with our education community, and more investment by our clinical partners to support and retain their most valuable resource, their employees. Graduate numbers are coming up post-pandemic, so many of our programs are adjusting to our new reality in education by revisiting program eligibility (e.g. pathways for new communities of students, institutional/program policies on transfer of credit and high school dual credit), opening new program tracks; others are supporting their communities as they have for years—maintaining their ACCREDITED programs. While these are positive signs for our educational community, there is much work to be done. And done does not mean finished—our efforts must be sustainable and ongoing.
What is next for the second half of 2023 for the ARC/STSA? More education in our community, more outreach, and opening dialogues with our known partners and cultivating relationships with new ones. We are not the only profession dealing with a workforce shortage, ask our nursing colleagues. I personally spoke with close to 200 operating room nurses at the AORN conference earlier this spring who support the need for fully educated graduates of accredited surgical technology programs to work side-by-side with them in the operating room. Let us further cultivate that support, if not nationally then locally.
I cannot emphasize enough our strength together. Many of you are struggling with post-pandemic issues in your communities. Please reach into our community for support. I am awed by the care you all have for each other, and the support displayed on your community social media pages.
The ARC/STSA is here to support our programs and our educators, from the national issues like the workforce shortage, to individual program questions about clinical agreements, curriculum mapping, policies, Annual Reports and more. Please use us as a resource as you work through your challenges. Email me at ron.kruzel@arcstsa. The team of volunteers and staff here are ready and able. Together we are better!
