By: Dawn Sheldon, MSN, RN
Creating a school-life balance can be tricky. Students are expected to live life as they knew before pursuing a career or a career change. Navigating school and life, together, may come as a surprise.
Struggling with school-life balance doesn’t have to be the case. Many propose ways to balance school and life, and resources are available. Few schools consider this school-life balance when creating a program or organizing a curriculum.
Enter the vocational school, Dialysis Education Services. They have created a cutting-edge program training students to excel as hemodialysis technicians or patient care technicians. There are several pieces to this unique curriculum creating elevated results. One such piece was taking some of the responsibility of maintaining the students’ school-life balance, appealing to both students and instructors.
Creating a School-Life Balance
Traditionally, the process of finding a school-life balance has rested on the shoulders of the student. It goes something like this. The student enrolls in a program. On the first day of class, or classes, the student receives the syllabus. At this point, it becomes obvious that, while in school, the student’s life will be very different.
Maybe the student figures out the school-life balance. Perhaps they can’t figure it out at all. Working, spending time with family/friends, and finding time for themselves is not helping them succeed.
The sense of failure and overwhelm may not be as intense or even present if programs are created with the students’ school-life balance in mind. Possibly, a program geared toward allowing the student to maintain their life and still succeed in that program can exist, producing successful graduates.
Dialysis Education Services and School-Life Balance
Why should it be strange that a school considers the school-life balance of students when it creates a program? The answer is it should not be strange, but the reality is it is the exception and rarely the rule. The success rate of the students, and the program, stand to benefit from such a concept.
Dialysis Education Services has, once again, jumped ahead of the pack. They have thought about school-life balance. The platforms and curricula of the hemodialysis technician program support the student’s school-life balance.
The most common advice for people seeking a school-life balance is time management, how to prioritize, ask for help, and create boundaries. By design, Dialysis Education Services hemodialysis technician program supports all these suggestions.
Easily Manage Time
The length of the hemodialysis training program offered by Dialysis Education Services is four months. A lot of content is covered in this time. On the other hand, the time commitment can decrease the duration of disruption of a student’s life. This hemodialysis technician training program is efficient and respects the student’s valuable time.
When students address the need for time management with their school-life balance, they can take a sigh of relief when choosing the hemodialysis program offered by Dialysis Education Services. Knowing the requirement to adjust their life to facilitate their schooling for only four months eases the burden of creating a school-life balance.
The platforms available to the student to learn gives the student flexibility. This is key to enabling time management. Students can complete some parts of the program online and virtually at a time that is best for them. “…the virtual classroom made this the best [program],” Lossene Dorleh, a student at Dialysis Education Services.
Clinical locations are available nationwide. The student will likely have a clinical location near them. This can lessen drive time. Not to mention that the network of clinical sites available remove the burden of locating a clinical location from the student.
Prioritization
School-life balance
Prioritizing helps to create a school-life balance. A program with four months to completion ranks high on the student’s priority list. However, the program allows the student to develop a workable priority schedule.
Having multiple systems students can use to learn helps with prioritization. They can keep their education in front of them, but at what time of day, or what day, is left for them to determine.
Family life and work-life remain a priority in a student’s life. With the flexibility afforded to them from the Dialysis Education Services hemodialysis technician program, family and work-life will not suffer. Taking advantage of the virtual and online course material, students can use small pockets of time to complete assignments and lessons. Lossene Dorleh agrees, “A little daily study time I learned is a lot better than 5 hours at one sitting.”
Educator Support
Dialysis Education Services stands out from others because of its, “commitment to the student’s success, availability of mentoring,” Anne Diroll, Instructor Dialysis Education Services.
Dialysis Education Services aims to employ educators with the same philosophies and forward-thinking skills. Instructors teaching the courses within the hemodialysis technician program are accessible and willing to help students reach the school-life balance they desire.
Teachers must create this balance themselves. They have become experts in creating a balance between life and school. They are a valuable resource to the students. The ease of accessibility to these teachers and their expertise gives the students tools they can use to achieve their school-life balance.
The instructors are proactive. They will reach out if a student shows signs of struggle with the program. They will help the student determine the root cause of the issue and offer solutions. Some of these root causes may be the school-life balance. The instructors will act and assist the student in navigating through finding that balance.
Boundaries Defined
It can be hard to stop going to school. Students may bring their studies with them when visiting with family/friends. They may stop attending social activities to ensure they have time to study.
Dialysis Education Services understands the importance of family and friends in a student’s life. The program’s schedule shows they care—a student’s well-being and success are a priority of the program.
The skill of creating boundaries addresses this issue of school-life balance. To make that school-life balance, the student must be able to create boundaries between school and other areas of their life. The hemodialysis technician program offered at Dialysis Education Services promotes an environment that allows the student to dedicate time to their social activities.
As previously discussed, the short program length creates only a short-term requirement for creating boundaries. The student attends classes online, learns about clinical practices and theories virtually and attends clinicals nearby. Dedicated time for lessons and clinicals can be placed on the student’s calendar. Working around this schedule, the student can dedicate other times for social activities.
The Program That Does It All
The hemodialysis technician training program offered by Dialysis Education Services is ahead of the game in many respects. Specifically, when thinking of the student as a whole person who lives a life outside of the classroom.
With this consideration, the program allows students to create the school-life balance they seek. The program is four months in length. The lessons are online, enabling students to attend from wherever is best for them. Clinical concepts and theories are available virtually, allowing the student to learn at a time that works best for them. The local clinicals will enable the student to have a dedicated time on their schedule just for clinicals and other times for social activities.
A thoughtful program considering the students’ school-life balance benefits both the organization and the student. Dialysis Education Services has switched the responsibility of managing school and life. In doing so, they have created a program unlike any other.
Dialysis Education Services’ hemodialysis technician training program has the results to demonstrate this. The program’s completion rate is 91% and the licensure exam passage rate is 100%. A student can enroll in this program confidently, knowing there will be minimal disruption in their daily life while succeeding in completing the program. They will see that they are positioned to pass the licensure exam after completing the program. From there, they will excel in their career.
