As 2021 comes to a close, I want to take the opportunity to look back on a year that turned out much differently than we could have imagined. While it was challenging in many ways, it also showed how strong we are as a company – even in the most challenging times. We can take pride in the fact that we thrived when the pandemic brought the world to a halt and forced us to keep our distance from family and friends.

It was not easy to manage the safety of our employees and students. As a result, we increased our network activity and platforms utilization to continue providing a superior customer experience and great content. The culmination of knowledge, skills, ad abilities that I have acquired over 22 years in healthcare and business were stretched to the limit. The reliability of the service we offer and the quality of the content we submit define us. 

We rose to the circumstance! Our networks and platforms passed the test, and we proved as an organization to be both robust and highly flexible in the face of change. More importantly, we proved to be strong contributors to community, academia, medicine, and patient outcomes. We answered the call of the pandemic crisis and COVID-19 solutions. As a result, six (6) Dialysis Education Services representatives went into the COVID-19 testing and vaccination field as Vice President of Operations and Education, managers, medical assistants, and patient service representatives. Our talents in education, operations, human resources, data analytics, and patient care were tapped to provide for close to 500,000 community tests, thousands of vaccinations, and other medical services, mainly in Orange and Ventura Counties. 

In the midst of crisis and response, our company reached several other significant accomplishments, including securing national relationships with major dialysis providers, developing and launching our Virtual Classroom, and obtaining BONENT approval for a National online Hemodialysis Training Program. All of this was accomplished in a time when we needed to adapt to very adverse circumstances.

So, I want to thank you all for your business, your hard work and your commitment shown over the past year. Our combined strength is what makes us successful as a company. I hope that when you’re celebrating the holidays with friends and family, you look back on the year with the same sense of accomplishment.

Our 2022 Hemodialysis Training Program, Certification Review, and Continuing Education courses will be delivered via our new Virtual Classroom. Users will have a personal login, 24/7 access to course materials, and constant communication with instructors. 

Our Virtual Classroom meets increasing demands for online courses and paves the way for National distribution. Virtual meetings and classrooms are standard tools in the COVID-19 era, providing several benefits to student consumers, such as safety, convenience, and savings on travel-associated expenses. This means that the program is accessible and affordable to anyone in the United States. 

The Hemodialysis Training Program Certification Classes will begin during the first full week of each month. The full 2022 schedule, along with other related documents, can be found on the DES website.

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Beginning January 2022, we will be hosting a Certification Review on the last Sunday of each month. They will be 4-hour sessions from 8 am to 12 pm PST. This course will be free to our Hemodialysis Training Program Students and available for purchase to the general public. 

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We will be hosting CE events on the first Sunday of each month in 2022. We will feature prominent members of the healthcare community as presenters for the courses. This is an opportunity to receive 3 CE hours. Presentations will be recorded for future viewing in the CE archives. 

Our first CE event, Kicking Off the CE Community, will happen on Sunday, December 19th! It will be held virtually via Zoom. The event will be from 8 am to 11 am PST/11 am to 2 pm EST. 

Take this opportunity to learn something new before the Christmas holiday! For more information on how to sign up, please visit the Continuing Education page. After signing up for this event, you will receive the Zoom link after registering for the Event.

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December 19, 2021

Presenter: Anne Diroll, RN, CNN, CLNC 

This course will focus on the cardio-pulmonary dynamics in the dialysis patient. By recognizing the importance of the heart and lungs, and making appropriate interventions, we can maximize the goals of treatment. This understanding also improves outcomes for our dialysis patients. 

-Anne Diroll

After completing this course, the student will be able to:

• Describe and recognize the signs and symptoms of hypoxemia.
• Describe the normal and out of range oxygen levels of blood.
• Describe the appropriate interventions for hypoxemia.
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The full schedule of our CE Events can be found on the DES website. 

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Chris Whitehurst (Class of 2004)

Chris Whitehurst was one of Morales’s first students, back in 2004. He now proudly has over 15 years of experience in dialysis. 

He worked as a transport orderly at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, where he saw Dialysis Professionals working on acute cases every day. With his curiosity piqued and a desire to do more with his life, he looked for ways to learn about what they did and how he could become a part of this community. It was around this time that he met Morales, who provided him with the information he needed to begin this step in his career. He enrolled with the school, and Morales became his teacher. He looks back on his training fondly. It gave him all the necessary skills and knowledge to become a Dialysis Technician and resulted in a lasting friendship with Morales, which is coming up on 20 years.

Although proud of his accomplishments with his first employment in dialysis, the same passion that led him to become a part of the dialysis community in the first place led him to search for an opportunity that would allow him to “move up the ranks” in his career. He found his home with VA Long Beach. Their offerings were better aligned with what he was looking for. In a full-circle turn of events, he is responsible for training some of Morales’s students that rotate through his hospital department. He is well-liked and shares what he learned all those years ago with the future professionals of dialysis.

To future students and anyone else interested in starting a career in dialysis, he says, “Don’t hesitate, go for it! If you’re the type of person who enjoys helping others, becoming a dialysis technician is the right way to go. There is lots of gratification involved in helping people.” 

24 Christmas Eve

25 Christmas Day

26 Kwanzaa

31 New Year’s Eve

We’ll see you next year!