COPD Educator Course Was Great
Last weekend, I was in Denver attending the COPD Educator Course sponsored by the AARC and the COPD Foundation of Colorado. The conference was excellent! If you've never been to one, you should go the next time it's offered.
The speakers were great. The host hotel, the Doubletree in Denver, was a beautiful building with comfortable rooms and friendly staff.
The conference started on Thursday afternoon. After registration, a crowd of about 200 was welcomed and the speakers introduced. The hall was full of respiratory therapists, nurses, a few doctors and even some patients who would speak to us about their lives on oxygen.
After receiving a copy of my materials, I sat down and listened to speakers who were both entertaining and knowledgeable about their chosen subjects. After each lecture, there was a brief question and answer period, and these provided even more insight into how things are being done around the country.
It was a great opportunity to meet other practitioners from many different states and several different work environments around the country.
Friday morning featured a wonderful continental breakfast followed by speakers until lunch time. For lunch, we all got to sit down with colleagues from around the nation, compare notes, network a little and enjoy a wonderful meal.
Back in the lecture hall, classes went on through the afternoon until about 4:30 p.m. At that time, the speakers took questions from the audience. I thought this was really cool. There you have some of the most knowledgeable and experienced experts in the country in front of you, just waiting for your question or comment. What more could you ask for?
If there were drawbacks, they were largely unnoticed. Annoyingly, cell phones went off during the lectures. The cell phone thing was just bad manners. When attending a conference, turn the thing off! Few things are as distracting to someone as trying to listen to an expert lecture on a subject while also trying to figure out what song someone is using for a ring tone. This is just rude.
It's rude to the speaker who has taken the time to come give their perspective, rude to the people sitting around the person being called and rude to the organizers of the conference, who have spent a lot of time and effort in putting together quality programs such as this one.
Turn the thing off! At the very minimum, put it on vibrate. Do something so that the phone is not a distraction to others, please.
In a related area, it was reported there is a lack of involvement by many respiratory departments in the AARC/Homeland Security ventilator survey.
The AARC now has heard from roughly 63 percent of the departments nationally about their ventilator status. This is a poor showing, in my opinion, for how seriously we are taking the potential swine flu pandemic we may have to deal with this winter. If you haven't already done so, please get your survey completed and sent in.
It takes only a few minutes but provides a wealth of information.
In my opinion, the COPD Educator Course is a winner! Great speakers, nice atmosphere, friendly folks at the registration desk and in the conference itself, very approachable "experts" who were willing to share facts and figures as well as personal experiences while allowing others to share theirs also. The conference was long enough to cover a lot of ground, but not so long it droned on with no end in sight like some conferences. I think everyone who attended would agree that this one was a keeper!
That's just my opinion.