AARC member since 1984
Region Clinical Manager
Apria Healthcare
St. Louis, MO
AARC Activities:
Member, AARC BOD, 2005 - present. Member, Specialty Section/Roundtable Steering Committee,2007 - present, Member, AARC Classified Ad Project 1992 -1993. Chair-elect, Homecare Specialty Section, 2004, Chair, Homecare Specialty Section, 2005 - 2007
Affiliate Activities:
President, Missouri Society for Respiratory Care (MSRC), 2000 - 2002, President-elect, MSRC, 1998 - 2000, Past President, MSRC, 2002 - 2004. Board of Directors, Missouri Society for Respiratory Care, 1998 - 2004. Co-Chair for the Missouri Society for Respiratory Care Political Advocacy Contact Team, 1999 - present, Chair MSRC Scolarship committee, 1996, Editor, MSRC RTribune, 1992. Member, MSRC Education Committee, 1992 - 1997
Related Organizations:
Member, American Lung Association / Pulmonary Care Society, Member, Missouri Thoracic Society
Education:
Master of Arts, Webster University, 2001 Bachelor of Health Science/Respiratory Therapy, University of Missouri, 1985 RRT, NBRC, 1986
Publications:
Contributor: Egan's Fundamentals of Respiratory Care Workbook, sixth edition, C.V. Mosby, 1995, R. Rice, Pediatric Home Care Procedure Manual, C.V. Mosby, 1998, R. Rice, Manual of Home Health Nursing Procedures, C.V. Mosby, 2000, AARC Clinical Practice Guideline, Long-Term Invasive Mechanical Ventilation in the Home, revised 2007, AARC Clinical Practice Guideline, Oxygen Therapy in the Home or Alternate Site Health Care Facility, revised 2007 Publication: JA Kohorst, Transitioning the Ventilator-Dependent Patient from the Hospital to Home, Medscape, 2005, http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514735.
What steps will you take to strengthen international exposure of respiratory care?
Respiratory therapy as a profession is growing worldwide. The AARC Executive Office and the AARC Board of Directors Executive Committee are already working hard to strengthen the ties to respiratory therapy professionals around the world. If I am the successful candidate for the office of Vice President of External Affairs, I will lend my enthusiastic support to the AARC International Fellowship Committee.
How would you suggest we recruit and educate the leaders of the future for the AARC?
I have always felt that it is my obligation as a respiratory therapist to stay involved, informed and active in my profession. Membership in the AARC provides me with the opportunity to meet this obligation. I taught respiratory care for five years. We emphasized the importance of active participation in the AARC. Our students became members and many of them still are. I was elected to a leadership position with my state society in 1998. I travel across several states for my employer, visiting our branches in both urban and rural markets. I have presented at national, state affiliate, and local hospital conferences for over ten years. I recruit everywhere I go. I take every opportunity to exhort therapists to join or to re-join the AARC. Many of them have. Newer, younger therapists will emulate experienced, professional leaders in our field. We are those leaders. Our efforts make a difference.
With the introduction of the Medicare Respiratory Therapy Initiative Bill in Congress, how are you going to work to get that bill successfully passed?
I have served as the Missouri Society for Respiratory Care Political Advocacy Contact Team Co-Chair since 1999. I have, and will continue to advocate for patient access to Respiratory Therapists, outside of the acute care setting. I have attended the AARC PACT meetings in Washington, DC for the past seven years. Each year, my colleague and I call on our Congressmen and Senators asking for their support of the AARC initiatives. This year (2008), my Congressman, Todd Akin, signed on as a co-sponsor to the AARC Medicare RT Part B bill, HR 3968, as a result of our visit. As the MSRC PACT Co-Chair, I am also responsible for passing on Government Affairs updates to the MSRC 435 committee members and urging them to contact their legislators asking for support of the AARC initiatives. I will continue to serve in this capacity.
