Volume 63 - Spring 1996	Download

Executive Director's corner by Olive M. Kimball, EdD, MT(ASCP) Executive Director

Every day or so my mail brings another survey to complete. Sometimes they come with a packet of instant coffee, sometimes with a dollar bill, but often without even a reasonable rationale or a "thank you. " They all seem to merge one into another and I complete one only if I believe that doing so may actually make an important difference.

The arrival on my desk of several recent surveys made me wonder how program directors view the NAACLS or American Medical Association (AMA) surveys that come out on a regular basis. I considered that perhaps their significance may not be fully understood and that their differences might be unclear. To provide clarification, I thought we should examine each individually.

From surveys which appear in the NAACLS News, we receive valuable comments and suggestions on ways to better serve programs. Also, we often send out a short letter asking for information. We recently sent such a letter asking about institutional accreditors and Title IV funding. However, the major survey that NAACLS distributes every other year to accredited programs provides information for the NAACLS Directories, and the survey sent from the AMA provides information for the NAACLS Inventories.

NAACLS Inventories
(from the AMA Allied Health Directories)

The annual survey which NAACLS supports and which accredited programs receive is mailed directly from the AMA. The AMA has been distributing this survey for several years. The survey formerly gathered data from CAHEA-accredited programs and has been continued in basically the same format since CAHEA dissolved.

For the past two years, in June or July, we have sent out a letter to program directors indicating that the survey would again be forthcoming and requesting that it be completed and returned directly to the AMA. In August the surveys arrived and it was our assumption that program directors carefully completed and returned them as instructed.

Information obtained by means of this survey is assembled by the AMA Division of Medical Education Products and transposed into the Directory of Allied Health Education, which is published in April of each year. The AMA Allied Health Directory, now expanded and known as the Allied Health and Rehabilitation Professions Education Directory, contains NAACLS program lists along with program lists and data for all CAAHEP programs plus several other newly cooperating allied health professions such as Speech-Language Pathology, the Dental-related occupations and Dietetics.

The return rate for NAACLS programs has always been very high. It is fortunate that this is the case because the AMA survey, which was formerly used to collect CAHEA data, has now become an annual report and is required by Essential 24. Essential 24 states that programs must comply with administrative requirements for maintaining accreditation including the provision of requested information. Programs not complying with Essential 24 will be placed on Administrative Probation.

You can see from this discussion how important it is that we all cooperate with the production of this valuable AMA publication. We now pay for certain costs for copy of the NAACLS-specific program lists. By doing so we are then permitted to produce NAACLS Inventories from that copy.

The NAACLS Inventories are bound, soft-cover lists of accredited programs by level and state. They include all NAACLS program lists from the AMA Directory with names of program directors, addresses, class capacity and tuition costs. They are helpful to both students and faculty. This year, NAACLS developed a similar survey to gather our own data from approved programs. As a result, comparable data is now available on phlebotomy and cytogenetic technology programs.

The NAACLS Board of Directors is supportive of continued cooperation with the AMA's efforts at data collection appreciate its value to allied health education. The AMA information is one of very few sources for such data and allows for appraisal of trends in allied health education programs.

The board is also sensitive to the needs of its constituencies. Several professional organizations participate with NAACLS and we work closely with two separate certifying agencies. These certifying agencies use different occupational designations or terminology and NAACLS terminology reflects both. Unfortunately, we were not able to edit parts of the Directory last year nor again this year and some misunderstandings about how NAACLS programs were designated arose. We trust that such misunderstandings are behind us and that we may be able to provide continuing support for this data collection effort.

NAACLS Directories

The information included in the NAACLS Directories is only that which program directors supply, because the exact form returned by programs is reproduced in the NAACLS Directory. If a program does not contribute information, no information about that program is included in the Directory.

These directories are hard cover, three-ringed binders of significant size which provide detailed information about a program's application procedures, enrollments, curriculum and affiliates. Directories are important to potential students, to developing programs, to administrators, and to faculty conducting research. No editing of NAACLS Directory information is done at NAACLS and, because information is compiled only every other year, some may not be current.

Recapitulation

The NAACLS Directories hold a wealth of information provided by programs. The NAACLS Inventories are compiled from information generated through the AMA, but, as with the Directories, supplied by program directors. The NAACLS Directory information is provided by programs on a purely voluntary basis. The NAACLS Inventory information, reproduced from the AMA Directory, is required of NAACLS by federal law, and required of programs by the Essentials. We urge you to contribute to both. Your contribution is important for many reasons and it certainly makes a difference.

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			Role playing as a method for teaching and evaluating the affective domain by Benna Boutty, MA, MT(ASCP) Vice Chariman, PARC
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Features
			Act now! Attend a NAACLS workshop!
			Announcing upcoming scheduled site visits
			Dear Dr. NAACLS How to prepare to be a good site visitor
			Executive Director's corner by Olive M. Kimball, EdD, MT(ASCP) Executive Director
			Perservering misconceptions by Olive M. Kimball, EdD, MT(ASCP) Executive Director
			President's report by Cynthia Wells, EdD, CLS(NCA), MT(ASCP) President, Board of Directors
			Schedule of upcoming NAACLS meetings

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