Complaint Review: Cleveland Clinic Surgical Technology Program - Cleveland Ohio

Tri-C Cuyahoga Community College runs a Surgical Technology certificate program, co-sponsored

by The Cleveland Clinic, at the Clinic's 9500 Euclid Avenue Main Campus facilities where the curriculum, behaviors, quality of students, and practical tests need urgent improvement - where things need to be about the patient care, not misplaced conceptions of prejudice and racial/gender consciousness leading to students going at each other.  Its mostly a Cleveland Clinic looking the other way for an onsite problem issue. 

Ms. Luvenia - who does the majority of the clinical instruction - has needed to retire, or get a co-director, for awhile now.  Her excuse, when she can't remember things, that she 'has a touch of Alzheimer's' isn't the answer for this Clinic-sponsored Surgical Technology program turning around.  This Surgical Technology program is attempting to turn out mature practitioners who will be critically responsible for patient care in ORs in Ohio, and be observing & learning at CCF - where they can't say that they will 'b***h-slap' an unconscious patient who irks them - like they do a classmate. 

No matter where you came from, there's a time to put the ghetto slang, and black talk(ebonics), on 'reserve' - and for Jerri Sue Thornton to not allow the black & minority students to do this as she does.  At Tri-C, the emphasis is on career-retraining, so any behavior is ok for a minority or black student; they are given every excuse to get them through for the Kasich jobs agenda.  What Tri-C & Cleveland Clinic are forgetting is that training people that have no clinical judgment, or prior experience in the field, is a difficult thing - what the legal profession has found out with paralegals. 

White students objecting to the favoritism are put on probation for 'prejudice' - multiple times if need be to put them in their place - lectured non-stop by Karen Miller, insulted, called names, sent threatening emails, and flunked after being unable to do a practical with two unsterilized instrument sets and a 300+lb OR bed to move.  CCF staff watched the charade as it played out last year, and will probably do the same in 2011.  And if the CCF staff wasn't concerned about the student, they should have been concerned that the OR bed would work for the next patient when Ms. Luvenia got through.   

This ST program should have a highly competitive application group (not the maintenance workers n at CCF, not former GM assembly line workers, not bartenders who've flunked out of every other program for lack of interest, not transgenders looking for dates with CCF staff in all the wrong places - check out the CCF library where the solicitations go on).  We all have to keep our needs in the appropriate context except the TGs at the Clinic, who are there looking for partners in the name of studying.  You can't say anything in class as it might have a transgender subcontext; the classes are literally wrecked with racial & gender intrigue.  Race & gender should not be noticeable in the professional sphere - the clinical ability & professionalism should be noticed first.

The CCF staff should provide the best teachers - who can at least pronounce the terms and do the equivalent of a clock-drawing test that doesn't scream 'dementia' or no hand-eye coordination (take your pick at the interpretation of the instructor drawings that they 'love' to do). 

The list of clinical RN instructors at the Cleveland Clinic is quite long and impressive.  And the behaviors, both at Tri-C campus, and in the surgical areas of the Clinic, have to be held to some behavioral standards - not jack-ups and/or b***h-slapping of the culture-shocked student who got a 93.  But nothing is as it should be, and the CCF maintenance workers that don't get accepted steal the class materials/handouts from the classes at CCF - to get back - it's public school time at CCF with the negative social maturity of the workers & students.  



The CCF/Tri-C program has a prevailing undercurrent of reverse racial prejudices, and gender misconceptions, stealing class time (where everyone has to understand transgender & where you have to watch & listen to a presentation by one of the students on Gender Reassignment Surgery because he/she had it).  Discussions of everything except what should be discussed are going on in class, and in Karen Miller & Beth Stokes' offices.  The Deans & Program Director can't stick to the program issues & curriculum context - they have to get into race & gender problems that should not be in class time.    



Last year, about this time, Luvenia Lewis RN after months of derogatory belittling comments - had a woman move an OR bed that led to a shoulder stress fracture to make her 'flunk' a practical that is about moving instruments, and not furniture.  Surgical technology is not about the furniture in the OR except in a superficial sense - that's what the maintence and cleaning staff are there for.   



The fracture is still healing and put the woman out of commission for months and it was on purpose as no black student was required to move anything beyond the scope-of-practice weight of 25 lbs.  A Cleveland Clinic woman staff noticed the abuse as it was going on in the OR area, during a snowstorm, and did nothing to stop it (like a coach at Penn State) except remark to Ms. Lewis as to why she was doing this?  Was it making someone do a task that someone had inappropriately required of her?  In her day, these OR beds did not have 50-100+lbs of sophisticated electrical equipment in the base.



Wasting a white students time with equal opportunity issues, and prejudices, is not ok in an OR area with patients undergoing difficult surgeries where the attention needs to be on the patient care - not the social issues.  Ms. Luvenia Lewis in the past has apparently done a better job than this past years class where a student put in a lot of time in to get a shoulder fracture and that student had a known low bone density that Ms. Luvenia thought was a joke. 



The curriculum is very poor, with multiple mistakes of the Surgical Technology template course materials left uncorrected and they are just guideline materials.  Beth Stokes doesn't have time to correct the course materials, as she's too busy putting white students on probation for prejudice when they try to defend themselves about what's really going on in class.  The behavior of the students has been allowed to be way below medical facility behaviors.  And Ms. Lewis is known for being tough, and having come up tough, but that has its place. 



It is hoped that The Cleveland Clinic will do something about the students that she flunks with inappropriate tasks to let them have practicals where there is some standardization in the future some objectivity of the RN instructor.  It was brought up to Barbara Mikuszewski, the Tri-C Health

Careers Dean, that black students were invited to extra practices on Tuesdays (by invitation only) and

flunking with 40-50s on the written tests while certain white students had their practices cancelled for the parties of Ms. Luvenia and were refused practice times when they asked, sent to get equipment in the OR in areas where those instruments were not stocked, etc.   

This is a program that should pass only the best type of student (to work with human tissues and be truthful) - fairly - with equal practice opportunity times & experiences, without risk of physical injury for some past hurt of the instructor.  The woman student whose shoulder was fractured never had met Ms. Lewis before but she irked Ms. Lewis and many saw this as it played out and should have stopped it for starters Beth Stokes - who should be fired.  This program needs some changes and some apologies to the students who were put through hell as Beth Stokes took over and put the emphasis on equal opportunity without equal responsibility. 

Only the Cleveland Clinic reputation, and the Cleveland Clinic patient, loses out when the best students have to drop out for harassments, mistreatment, or be flunked out while sustaining a shoulder stress fracture - which a Cleveland Clinic orthopedic will treat, but that's not the way to get business..