This summer, Sinclair’s Respiratory Care program won its seventh Distinguished RRT (Registered Respiratory Therapist) Credentialing Success Award. This award is given to respiratory programs throughout the United States. Sinclair Professor Nick Mullen accepted the award on behalf of the Respiratory Care department.
To win the award, programs have to meet or exceed the required outcomes for graduates. These outcomes are set by the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care. Mullen accepted the award, on behalf of the department, at the American Association for Respiratory Care’s annual Summer Forum. The award honors the entire program. The department’s faculty, staff and administration have now received this award 7 years in a row.
Mullen attended the Summer Forum in July. Nicholas doesn’t want all the credit for receiving this particular award.
“This is an award that our entire program has won for many years. I was the person who went to the AARC Summer Forum to accept the award,” said Mullen.
“Accepting an award on the behalf of Sinclair, my director Sanja Keller and other faculty… it made me proud to be at Sinclair, gave [me] more passion as an instructor to help more students, [and made me] grateful that I’m a Sinclair alumni as well,” said Mullen.
This helps him pass the same appreciation for Sinclair onto students.
“I feel the program continues to shine through faculty teamwork and student appreciation,” said Mullen.
Mullen believes the program’s focus on supplementing research and knowledge with on-hands experience has contributed to its success.
“You can’t just always teach the knowledge you have, you have to also include experience. We often use a human simulator for those reasons,” said Mullen. “Let students make mistakes there, so we neutralize mistakes so they don’t carry on. Lectures and PowerPoints are useful but nothing [gets] close to learning experiences.”
Mullen has enjoyed some positive experiences in the field and in academia.
“As an instructor, I love the light bulb moments with the sophomore students, where they don’t necessarily understand a certain thing, and helping them make the connection – as well as the puzzle of how to teach certain students who aren’t fast learners and [who] need a bit more help gaining that light bulb moment. As a healthcare provider I enjoy the journey of watching patients go from their worst to their best in pulmonary rehab. It’s a very powerful experience that I cherish dearly. As an instructor, I love to watch interprofessional education – where students switch roles and get to understand the relationship between two positions that work in tandem together,” said Mullen.
Mullen appreciates the opportunity to instill students with compassion and help lead them to success. He admires the leadership of Sanja Keller, who he believes goes above and beyond to secure what is needed for the program to be successful – from equipment to staffing. He believes Keller’s work makes everyone comfortable and that it is the reason this award winning program continues to thrive at Sinclair.
Trey Turner
Intern