Newsletter

ARC/STSA is celebrating 50 years of excellence in 2022! Is your organization celebrating a 50th milestone? We want to hear about it!

With summer coming to a close, I hope that you all were able to take some well-deserved time off to relax and recharge. This year is rushing by at a frantic pace, and there is much to update you on from the world of accreditation.

Thirteen years ago, I made the decision to transition from working in the operating room to teaching full time with only a year of experience as an adjunct educator. Like most of my colleagues, I came straight out of the clinic with only a fraction of what I needed to succeed.

2020 was a challenging year for surgical technology instructors, with many having to quickly retool their courses and shift to distance education delivery. Some became Zoom experts and provided synchronous lectures while others used their college’s learning management system (LMS) to deliver course materials.

The ARC/STSA Board of Directors recently welcomed two new members, Eboni Saurage, EdD, CST, and Jay Chambers, BS, CST.

The ARC/STSA Chris Keegan Memorial Educator Scholarship is awarded to surgical technology and surgical assisting educators pursuing academic degrees with the goal of furthering their career in the field of surgical technology or surgical assisting education. 2021 scholarship recipient Kendra Thompson, ST-R, CST, shares her story.

The 2021 Association of Surgical Technology (AST) Conference took place July 21-23 in Las Vegas, NV. Christopher Achim and Edison Smith, student attendees from the Nevada Career Institute, Las Vegas, share their key takeaways from the memorable experience, including their favorite sessions, an overview of the student forum and the importance of attending an event of this magnitude early in their professional careers.

ARC/STSA is proud to announce the launch of the EdAccred website (Edaccred.org), with resources designed to support surgical technology and surgical assisting educators.

As educators, we bring a lot of creativity to our training, coming up with hacks, tips and tricks to demonstrate surgical procedural skills. We also know that hands-on, simulation-based training is one of the best ways to engage students and prepare them for entering the field. As program director, I look for simulation tools and training platforms that give me room to be creative.

One of the most important tasks when I begin a cohort is assigning my students to a clinical site. In years past, this process was completed with a few emails. However, many hospitals are now keeping track of their clinical students through an online onboarding service. These websites have given hospitals the ability to access all student information in one place, which has made it much easier for hospital staff to coordinate their clinical rotations.