Steve Nelson Joins AARC Executive Office

March 24, 2008

	Steve Nelson, MS, RRT, FAARC

Steve Nelson, MS, RRT, FAARC, will be bringing his years of experience in the technology industry to the AARC Executive Office, as he takes on the position of associate executive director in charge of IT operations.

He’ll also be taking a leadership role in the National Lung Health Education Program (NLHEP) and the American Respiratory Care Foundation (ARCF), two sister organizations where he’s been an active volunteer over the years.

“I have always thought of myself as a respiratory therapist first, despite the fact it has been a number of years since I was actually at the bedside,” says Nelson, who received his RT training at the University of Chicago Accelerated Program in 1976 and worked for many years as a staff therapist, department manager, and pulmonary diagnostics manager before going back to school to earn his MS in medical informatics at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, in 1986.

He comes to the AARC from Sun Microsystems, where he served as a senior security architect, working on projects in industries ranging from health care and education to telecommunications and finance. He also did an 11-year stint at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, serving as a systems administrator in the research computing facility, working on research projects in thoracic disease and intensive care, among others.

Nelson, who has maintained his AARC membership and active involvement in the profession throughout his varied career, serving as an ARCF trustee, on the editorial board for Respiratory Care, and publishing and presenting on pulmonary function technology, says he decided to take on the AARC position to satisfy a renewed desire to make a difference in people’s lives. “I reached a point in the tech industry where I didn’t feel that I was doing anything to help people. The projects were challenging, but all they did was make more money for corporations.”

He also says he always knew he’d return to RT eventually. “I didn’t know how or why, but it was important for me to keep connected . . . keeping a license forced — or maybe I should say, ‘encouraged’ — me to keep up to date. And this part probably sounds corny, but I have always admired the work that Sam Giordano, Ray Masferrer, Dr. David Pierson, and too many others to list here have put into the AARC. I wanted to some day be able to say that I had helped, even a little bit, in advancing RT as a profession.”

As the new IT guru at the AARC, Nelson will both manage existing systems and expand them to meet more of the needs of the membership. One new project on his agenda will be a “spirometry driver’s license” — basically a program aimed at getting physicians’ offices, clinics, and other locations up to speed on the use of spirometry.

“The program will include a way for candidates to submit patient test sessions and receive feedback on the quality of the tests,” says Nelson. ”The Lung Health Study has shown that this type of feedback helps keep the quality of testing at a higher level than when none is provided. By providing better quality tests, monitoring and controlling patients should improve. And we should see a reduction in the number of false positives referred for follow up studies in pulmonary labs.”

His immediate goals for the ARCF, where he’ll continue to serve as a trustee, include increasing funding so more fellowships can be offered for graduate research in respiratory therapy. “Graduate fellowships will help provide more options to a person’s career ladder,” he says.

He’ll also continue his efforts to promote the Ventilator 5K — a fundraising project he launched last year to give local RTs a new and fun way to raise awareness of the profession and money for local lung health concerns at the same time.

At the NLHEP, Nelson says he’ll “try to fill the large vacancy that Gretchen Lawrence left when she retired,” working to continue projects already underway and find new ways to bring the organization’s message of early diagnosis of COPD to the public.

He also wants to develop a formal “distance” mentoring program for members of the Association, noting “respiratory therapy needs to take advantage, not only of its greybeards, but as many members as we can to help identify and develop the leaders of the next generation.”

Please join us in welcoming Steve Nelson to the Executive Office staff.