American Association for Respiratory Care



TITLE SLIDEHello my name is Gary or Frank. I’m a director at __________. I’ve been a RT for years. I love my job, this profession, my paitents, and you will too.CONGRATULATIONSFirst I would like to say congratulations on your upcoming graduation. Or if you’re not quite ready to graduate, you’ll have that to look forward to soon, so enjoy those last years or months in school. For those of you about to graduate, we know it’s an exciting time for you. You probably have a lot on your mind –passing your NBRC examsgetting your state licensestarting that first job searchI just want to say, you have an exciting time ahead and I know many of you are already feeling a great satisfaction with the choice you made to have a career in respiratory therapy.WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?There is a lot on your mind right now. While we’re sure you’re excited to get started in your career, we know it’s also a time of stress and worry.Will you find a job?Will you pass your test?You worry about taking care of yourself, supporting yourself if you’re single or a family if you have a household with more than yourselfYou worry about what health care is really like. You know how to be a respiratory therapist but there are other challenges out there like the Affordable Care Act and Medicare reimbursement and hospital policies and procedures. And you’re probably worried about money – where’s it coming from, how much do you have to spendAARC SAVES YOU MONEYNBRC DISCOUNTI am here to talk about he AARC. But this is more than a commercial about maintaining a membership in your professional association. I want to tell you about the AARC from the perspective of helping you out with some of the things on your mind.Let’s talk about Money first --- that’s a big one for many of you. One thing you may be thinking about is taking your RRT exam. As an AARC member you can save $40 when you register at this website here. It’s a $40 discount for all AARC members on the RRT or other NBRC exams (unfortunately not the CRT, however).Another exciting thing for you is the AARC’s Exam Prep course that will help you prepare for your NBRC exams. It is an online course that allows you to take some practice tests and will identify areas where you may have some weaknesses, and help you see where you should prepare a little more. You’ll then be given a prescription for study and be presented with video instruction from well-known respiratory therapists who will provide refreshers in these knowledge areas. So watch for that announcement soon.CONTINUING EDUCATIONAs a professional respiratory therapist one thing you’ll need to be concerned with now is continuing education. In most states there is a requirement that you take a certain number of continuing education credits per year. The AARC calls our accreditation program CRCE, or Continuing Respiratory Care Education. All states accept AARC’s CRCE credits as valid continuing education for maintaining your state license.Again, here is a place where AARC can save you money because members have access to dozens of free and low cost continuing education courses online.Our live webcast series – much like this one – has about 18 programs per year. Plus there are many more options for what are called non-traditional (courses without an instructor present for you to interact with). Most states allow you to take several hours of non-traditional CRCE credits.DISCOUNTSNot only are there lots of free and low cost hours on the AARC website to help you earn CRCE credit, but there are many other discounts you can get on personal and professional services. We have some of those listed here. . . meeting discounts to AARC and state society meetings, products we offer, some personal insurance servicesCALCULATE YOUR SAVINGSThis is a good site where you can calculate what kinds of savings AARC brings you. I encourage you to go there and just play around with what services and beneifts might interest you and how much you save by being an AARC member. We just put a sample of services on this slide and you can see that if you were to purchase these items as a non-member, you would save about $190. That’s a pretty good return on your investment of a $78.50 or $90 membership in the AARC.AARC SAVES YOU MONEYMEMBERSHIPAnd you save on Membership! Students can take advantage of what we call an early bird rate. Beginning six months before graduation, students may opt to renew and get a great deal on two years of membership. For only $70, student members renewing from 6 months to two months before graduation will receive two years of membership. Regular dues rates for 2 years at this digital level are $178. The discount diminishes somewhat as a student member moves toward their graduation date, and this is so that the incentive to join is strong and the commitment to continue as a member is made early. To take advantage of this offer, students receive a letter and they must validate their membership and pay through the portal presented to them in the letter.WE’LL GIVE YOU A CAREER BOOSTWe have a newsletter called AARC Career News that emails twice a month to all members. We think you’ll find that of benefit because not only does it have recent job listings, it also has short stories with career advice in it. Make sure your email is up to date with the AARC by signing on to your profile and keeping your information current.You will need your AARC member number and password to get in to that site. And if you need help finding that, call the AARC Customer Service office at 972-243-2272MORE CAREER ADVICESpeaking of career help, this is something you can avail yourself of for free, without registering for the AARC Congress. This year in Anaheim we’ll have this 3 hour program on preparing yourself for a job – interviewing skills, writing resumes, answering interview questions and more. All for free for AARC members.WE’LL BRING HELP TO YOUAARConnect AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIASometimes you’ll find that you’d like to interact with others in the profession – to get information or share best practices. Someone just to bounce some ideas off or or ask a clinical question. It’s important to have that outlet. We connect you with other respiratory therapists and members from across the country. We have our own private social network where you can discuss or ask questions on the Help Line. Also we are in all the other major social media outlets.WHITE PAPERS AND RESOURCE TOOLSWhile you are on the job, there are very often times when you want to refer to what would be considered best practices. The AARC has a number of documents and papers that can help you wrestle through a problem or answer a question. These are important pieces of literature for our profession. So come to the AARC’s website to look for them whenever you need some support.PUBLICATIONS WITH LATEST INFORMATIONOr course we have our monthly publications that are available online and, if you want, as printed versions that are mailed to you. What’s really great about Respiratory Care journal now is all of the features that are available for searching and researching purposes on their new website.TAKE YOUR CAREER TO THE NEXT LEVELVOLUNTEER PROJECTSMany of us are in this profession because we love our patients, and we look for other ways of participating in our community or working on service projects. AARC gives you an outlet to help with that. Also your state socieites have projects that they need your help with – your energy and your participation. So do find ways of getting involved, taking those next steps with your profession, as a volunteer, as a researcher, as a writer, on state society committees and so forth.ADVOCACYOne big obligation we all have as professionals is to make sure we advocate for better patient care and better access for patients to respiratory therapists. I urge you to follow the issues that the AARC follows on our behalf to strengthen the profession in Washington with agencies like Medicare and Medicaid. Also follow the issues that are important in your state with licensure and regulation of respiratory therapy jobs. It’s important that you know these things, but AARC makes it easy to participate, be active, and advocate on these issues.AARCThe one point I want you leave you with is that as a professional respiratory therapist, there are some issues and obligations you will have that are different from those that you experienced as a student. While you may look upon AARC membership as an expense at this time, it really is not. First of all, AARC membership will help you by saving you money with the numerous professional obligations you’ll now have with continuing education and information needs. But AARC membership is just one mark of your professionalism. It’s something you do to stay on top of your game for your patients – that is really the end point – being a better respiratory therapist for a better patient interaction. Thank you. Please call on us at the AARC offices whenever we can help. ................
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