Respiratory Care
2022-2023 Program Review
1
Unit Profile
1.1
Briefly describe the program-level planning unit. What is the unit's purpose and function?
Respiratory Care provides cardiopulmonary care in a multitude of situations and arenas
- Respiratory Care Practitioners (RCPs) are first responders in the hospital to any cardiopulmonary emergency (ACLS)
- RCPs provide artificial airways and manage life support equipment in the emergency room, trauma, and intensive care units, high risk births, CODE Blues, and rapid responses
- RCPs work with any patient that has chronic breathing issues
- RCPs provide expertise in the hospital, asthma clinics, education, home care, skilled nursing facilities, PFT labs, ABG labs, pulmonary rehabs, CF clinics, pharmaceutical and medical sales
- The RC program has 2 years of prerequisites and is a 2 year program with over 750 hours of clinical externships where the students work under a licensed practitioner
- The RC program is a service program that serves patients at their most vulnerable. We believe that teaching and practicing volunteering, leadership, and service to our community are at the core of a service program. We practice inclusivity as about 40% of our students english as a second language and we have a diverse cultural group of students. Our program is run in cohorts that allows us to build relationships with our students and watch their progress for 2 years. We encourage (require) critical thinking and practice it from the first semester. RC is a difficult program as we are expected to be able to deal with very difficult situations quickly and appropriately. Patient’s lives depend on it.
1.2
How does the unit contribute to achievement of the mission of American River College?
The Respiratory Care program contributes to the ARC mission by providing a career path where students once they graduate, take and pass their national board exams, obtain a license and start work as a Respiratory Care Practitioner (RCP). The starting pay for a RCP in the Sacramento region is $48-54 which for many students, brings financial freedom and raises their socioeconomic status.
Through the course of the program, students refine their critical thinking skills as they develop practice as a Student Respiratory Care Practitioner (SRCP). The program hones their soft skills such as: professionalism, leadership (RCC leadership program), service, empathy, mental health awareness, and emergency responsiveness.
Respiratory Care as a profession is service-oriented. We believe that building a service mindset is crucial to entering a field where as RCP's, graduates will be dealing with patient's at their most vulnerable state. We place a heavy emphasis on service and community engagement. This is done through our Respiratory Care Club.
We are aware that being a difficult and fast-paced program, this may have an affect on our DI students. To help provide an equity-minded and insightful program, we have instituted a mentoring program which students receive professional development points and a retention specialist program. Both of these programs are critical to our student's success in the program.
2
Assessment and Analysis
The program review process asks units to reflect on the progress they've made towards achieving the goals they identified in each of the Annual Unit Plans they submitted since their last Program Review. Follow this link to access your previous EMP submissions. For Faculty support, please contact Veronica Lopez at lopezv@arc.losrios.edu.
2.1
Consider the progress that has been made towards the unit's objectives over the last six years. Based on how the unit intended to measure progress towards achieving these objectives, did the unit's prior planned
action steps (last six years of annual unit plans) result in the intended effect or the goal(s) being achieved?
Equipment: we have purchased and will need to continue to purchase new and updated equipment as the medical field therapeutics and evidence-based medicine changes.
Student success (high attrition):
- Retention specialists: our retention specialist (content specialists) program is running smoothly and helps in student success and retention. Struggling students are able to get extra help one on one and in open labs.
- Mentoring program: our mentoring program gives our second-year students an opportunity to mentor our first-year students, thereby, strengthening the new students and their own knowledge.
Clinical placement onboarding: Program assistants help keep the students current with clinical requirements (onboarding).
Professional Development: As we move away from COVID, seminars are starting again and we will send our faculty to make sure that they stay up-to-date on new modalities and therapeutics.
Lab space: CoARC, our accrediting body suggested that we needed our own lab space as many programs utilize the lab space and there is not enough time for RC students to practice and become competent on their equipment. This is in the planning stages.
Clinical Instructors: We are always in need of more clinical instructors - they are hard to recruit and retain due to the difference in compensation between education and the hospitals.
Clinical placements: There are many private schools that can pay for their clinical placements and their are 4 in the Sacramento region. We are all vying for the same clinical spots for our students.
Community service: RC is a service industry, we will continue to serve the community and provide many volunteer events for our students.
Meeting accreditation standards (CoARC): Our accrediting board sets standards that we much routinely review and make sure that we meet.
The standard data set is intended to provide data that may be useful in promoting equity and informing departmental dialogue, planning, decision making, and resource allocation.
Recent updates include (1) better integration with ARC’s Data on Demand system to provide users with more sophisticated and nuanced ways of exploring their unit’s data and (2) greater emphasis and access to disproportionate impact data (how student achievement outcomes vary by gender, race/ethnicity, veteran, foster youth, disability, and income/poverty level status) to enable users to engage in more advanced student-centered and equity-centered analysis, reflection, and planning.
To access the Enrollment or Disproportionate Impact data reports, you may be prompted to log in to ARC’s Data on Demand system. If so, click on “Log in with ARC Portal” and enter your Los Rios single sign-on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
(To streamline the standard data set, the productivity data element has been removed, as has the green-yellow-red light icon system for all data elements except for department set standards.)
The two data sets show 5 years of fall or spring duplicated enrollment, disaggregated by gender and ethnicity. Note that ARC's data-on-demand tool will soon provide considerably more sophisticated ways of viewing and analyzing your planning unit's headcount and enrollment trends.
- Green
- current fall/spring semester enrollment is equal to or exceeds the prior year's fall/spring enrollment.
- Yellow
- current fall/spring semester enrollment reflects a decline of less than 10% from the prior year's fall/spring enrollment.
- Red
- current fall/spring semester enrollment reflects a decline of 10% or more from the prior year's fall/spring enrollment.
The two data sets show 5 years of fall or spring productivity (WSCH per FTEF: the enrollment activity for which we receive funding divided by the cost of instruction). Note that ARC's data-on-demand tool will soon provide considerably more sophisticated ways of viewing and analyzing your planning unit's productivity trends.
- Green
- current fall/spring semester productivity is equal to or exceeds the prior year's fall/spring productivity.
- Yellow
- current fall/spring semester productivity reflects a decline of less than 10% from the prior year's fall/spring productivity.
- Red
- current fall/spring semester productivity reflects a decline of 10% or more from the prior year's fall/spring productivity.
Precision Campus Report Links
Disproportionate Impact
The disproportionate impact (DI) links now direct you to your unit’s DI data in ARC Data on Demand. The DI data will show which student groups are experiencing disproportionate impact for course success rates (A, B, C, Cr, P), A-B rates, and course completion rates (students who did not withdraw) at the course level.
In addition, a new report on intersectional DI (e.g., ethnicity/race by gender) is available for assessing intersectional Di for course success rates. The intersection DI report defaults to the subject code level (e.g., all ENGWR courses). Use the org tree in the side bar to filter to individual courses (click on the right arrow next to American River College, right arrow next to your division, right arrow next to your department/discipline, then select the specific course to view).
If prompted to log in, click on “Log in with ARC Portal” and enter your Los Rios single-sign on credentials (same as Canvas or Intranet).
Department Set Standards
Shows course success rates (# of A, B, C, Cr, and P grades expressed as a % of total grade notations) compared to lower and upper thresholds. Thresholds are derived using a 95% confidence interval (click the report link for details). The lower threshold is referred to as the Department Set Standard. The upper threshold is referred to as the Stretch Goal.
- Green
- Most recent academic year exceeds the upper threshold
- Yellow
- Most recent academic year falls between the lower and upper threshold
- Red
- Most recent academic year falls below the lower threshold
The faculty's continuous review of student achievement of course SLOs is documented using the Authentic Assessment Review Record (AARR), which involves a review of student work demonstrating achievement of the course SLO. Faculty record student achievement for a randomly assigned course SLO based on one or more authentic assessments that they regularly perform in their classes. The aggregated results are then reviewed annually as part of Annual Unit Planning, in which the results may serve as the basis for actions and, if applicable, resource allocation, and are aligned with college goals and objectives.
The AARR summary link provides an aggregate of the results of the most recent AARR implementation. The AARR results by SLO link provides a more detailed view, including the specific ratings assigned by faculty to each randomly assigned course SLO, and what, if any, actions were taken.
Note: Established thresholds (i.e., green/yellow/red indicators) have yet to be developed for SLO data.
In addition to reflecting on the metrics shown above, it may prove useful to analyze other program-level data to assess the effectiveness of your unit. For instructional units, ARC's Data on Demand system can be used to provide program and course level information regarding equitable outcomes, such as program access or enrollment, successful course completion, and degree or certificate achievement (up to 30+ demographic or course filters are available).
You might also consider pursuing other lines of inquiry appropriate to your unit type (instructional, student support, institutional/administrative support). Refer to the Program Review Inquiry Guide under the resources tab for specific lines of inquiry.
2.2
What were the findings? Please identify program strengths, opportunities, challenges, equity gaps, influencing
factors (e.g., program environment), data limitations, areas for further research, and/or other items of interest.
Program Strengths:
- National Award given by accreditation board (top 25% in the nation including AS, BS, and MS in RC)
- 100% of graduates working as a RCP 1 year after graduation (met standard for 3 years, award for past 8 years)
- our graduates get hired first according to local hospital management
- 90-100% of graduates passes their 1st exam on their 1st try
- Excellent feedback from clinical sites
- Mentoring program
- Retention Specialists (content specialists)
- structured labs, open labs, one on one
- Meet CoARC standards (outside accrediting body)
- Perform well on annual reports and site visits by CoARC
- Leadership program (transformative leadership)
- learning leadership skills, volunteering, follow hospital administrators
- Excellent clinical placements
- Great relationships with our clinical sites
- Strong and supportive advisory board
Program Challenges:
- High attrition
- due to difficult material in a short time
- medical knowledge is growing, therapeutics are growing, units have stayed the same for over 30 years
- New therapeutics - due to the low number of units - we are unable to add new and current content
- We are required to analyze and report our graduates performance on the board exams (2). Our numbers on the analysis are falling
- expensive equipment
- 1 ventilator $28-45000
- lab space
- # of clinical placements
- # of clinical instructors
- Increasing need for RCPs
- increasing amount of onboarding paperwork for clinical sites
- For profit programs pay for clinical placements
- Finding and retaining full-time faculty and adjunct faculty
- Pay in comparison to field pay
- Educator versus practitioner
3
Reflection and Dialog
3.1
Discuss how the findings relate to the unit's effectiveness. What did your unit learn from the analysis and how
might the relevant findings inform future action?
A review is always important to see what goals we have met and which goals we have yet to achieve. We will continue to evaluate the standards set by our accrediting body, clinical sites, and ARC so that we can meet and exceed these expectations.
3.2
What is the unit's ideal future and why is it desirable to ARC? How will the unit's aspirations support accomplishment of the mission, improve institutional effectiveness, and/or increase academic quality?
We would expect that we are able to grow the RC program. Graduates complete their AS in RC and are able to sit for their board exams and pass them. After licensure, graduates find employment as an RCP (Respiratory Care Practitioner) making between $48-56/hour. In many instances this changes the trajectory of their lives and their families lives. They are making great money by serving others. This program seeks to serve our DI population and give them an opportunity to change their lives. A RCP can support a family (one wage earner). This supports our community college, our hospitals, our sick populations, and our graduates.
4
Strategic Enhancement
4.1
Identify/define one or more program-level objectives which enhance the unit's effectiveness. What does your unit intend to do to work towards its ideal future? How will success be measured?
W would like to rewrite the curriculum to better serve our DI students. We are reviewing data from other RC programs, our own data, CoARC's standards, and ARCs mission to accomplish this in the most equitable way.
4.2
How will the unit's intended enhancements support ARC's commitment to social justice and equity?
More students will have access to successfully completing the program and becoming a practicing RCP.