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Program Administration and Leadership


WALK COOL. The Impact of Two Simple Words on a Lifetime of Challenging Physical Limitations, Oercoming Fears, Doubts, and Biases, and the Development of Powerful Resiliency in the Face of Disability

L.T. Arnold, BSN, RN, CCRN, CFRN, C-NPT, EMT; Airlift Northwest

WALK COOL. Everyone understands that it takes hard work, study, skill and practice to carve out professional success in this industry. Doing it while continually fighting to overcome the physical challenges, the occupational and industry biases, and the fears, self-doubt, and anxiety that are often associated with a disability requires learning and constantly practicing a different type of resiliency.

Walk Cool tells a very personal story of falling down and getting up again; of obstacle and doubt being pushed back by determination and creativity, and of cracking resilience being rebuilt and reinforced by community support. Walk Cool illustrates through personal experience how positive mindset, finding and creating opportunity, and being surrounded by advocates and encouraging voices helps create the perfect recipe for continued personal growth and professional success. It's easy to start, and it's something that can easily mix into the recipes of success for our organizations and our communities too.

The first step is to learn how to Walk Cool.

Where Do I Land? Boosting Collaboration and Communication with DISC

Kolby Kolbet, MSN, RN, CFRN, FACHE, CMTE, FAASTN; Life Link III

Have you ever presented an idea to someone else on your team and felt that they were on a different page than you? Were they seeking details that you didn't think were important? Did they focus more on deadlines and deliverables or did they focus more on the impact on your staff? The Maxwell DISC method will change the way you prepare to engage in conversation by understanding the behaviors in those around you as well as equip you with tools to ensure that you communicate and connect. The end result is – everyone’s needs are met and collaboration becomes painless and productivity increases! Come see where you land on the DISC!

Leadership in 2023 - Navigating Challenging Times

Thomas Allenstein, RN, MBA, CMTE; MedFlight / MedCare Ambulance

The last couple of years have been particular straining on everyone. As is the case during difficult times, leadership is essential right now. The problem is that we are seeing unprecedented times and issues. What are some things that leadership today needs to know in responding to the current situation. In this session, we will discuss what individuals in transportation leadership need to think about and how they might want to respond to the challenges they face.

Orienting the Newbie: A Subspecialty Team's Guide to Building Confident, Competent Flight Personnel

Maria Mandt, MD; Children's Hospital Colorado
Callie Searley, Children's Hospital Colorado

How does your orientation process look? Do you see orientation graduates entering their new profession with a healthy combination of confidence and humility? Or are you losing orientees to "failure to progress?" The lack of standardization across the healthcare industry, and especially within the air-medical transport community, has resulted in a wide variety of orientation methodologies. Not all are successful in bridging the gap between written curricula and bedside acumen. After several years of investigation, inquiries (and a little trial-and-error), the Children'sOne Flight program developed a 5-Phased orientation process that not only expedited the orientation process, but also left both our orientees and our preceptors more confident and satisfied with the system.

In this session, we explore the existing literature supporting best-practices in orientation processes and discuss the successes and opportunities in our experience developing the Children'sOne Flight orientation process. In discussing the results, we have realized the direction we intend to pursue and we hope to inspire you to examine your own process.


A LEAN Quality Management Toolkit

Kevin Collopy, MHL, FP-C, NRP, CMTE; Novant Health AirLink/VitaLink

Inefficiencies exist in every system! Have you changed your system, made improvements, or implemented solutions only to find the “problems” persist? Come join Kevin as he discusses how LEAN methodology has been used in his quality management system to decrease variation and improve outcomes! This presentation will introduce how LEAN thinking can be used to improve problem solving, perform root cause analyses, and test and monitor solutions. Come enjoy an engaging conversation on how to use systematic approaches to your ever day system problem solving so that you can save time and improve results! Discover simple new strategies to apply to current and future challenges in patient care, operations, finance, and planning! LEAN strategies can help every aspect of prehospital system operations!

Air Medical and Social Media: Don’t Keep it Casual

Natalie Hannah, MS; Life Flight Network

This lecture will discuss the negative trend in social media and public communications styles within the air medical community, why this hurts our industry, and how we can improve. We'll cover the trickle-down effects of overly casual language and breakroom talk in public forums; how these behaviors impact our credibility, wages, insurer reimbursements, recruitment, and revenue. In a post-NSA world, we must elevate the way we speak about our industry and the lifesaving work that we do without appearing elitist and unlikeable. The presentation will include written and visual examples of content throughout but will conclude with a look at social media dos and don'ts and provide the audience with tips for improving social media presence and communications within their own organizations.

Key Leadership Strategies for Building An Engaged, Empowered, and Agile Team

Kevin Hodge, BSN, CFRN, CMTE, MBA;  AirLink & VitaLink Novant Health

In today's current health industry, organizations are faced with an array of challenges. Staffing shortages, rapid change, micro economic challenges of inflation and supply chain disruptions require leaders to be engaged, transformational and change ready. Investing in our teams and building a culture that supports team involvement, connection to purpose and alignment with organizational strategy are essential for next level performance. This session will review tools and applications that leaders can utilize to develop relationships with staff, harvest wins and transition teams from a poster of surviving to one of thriving. This presentation will start with leader mindset and investing in emotional intelligence and progress to highlight utilization of the Stay Interview process walking participants through the importance of creating intentional collisions with team members to foster authentic communication, individual connection and create opportunities to foster growth and development.

What’s all the Buzz? Parallels in Leadership and Beekeeping

Michael Perkins, MBA-HCA, EMT-P, CMTE; MedFlight of Ohio/ MedCare Ambulance

Bees have been called the most important species on earth. What can we learn from them? This unique session explores the parallels between beekeeping and leadership in today’s ever changing healthcare environment. The presenter is an experienced leader and avid beekeeper. It was through a journey of increasing work life balance that the presenter learned the value these pollinators have on the planet. The same can be said about leadership. Never has it become more important to grow and develop our leaders for the future.