American Heart Association (AHA) instructors function as part of a hierarchy within the Emergency Cardiovascular Care (ECC) training and education division.
From the top down, the AHA designates Training Centers (TCs) to oversee and supervise the activities of Training Sites and their instructors. Training Centers are responsible for:
- Train and update instructors
- Review rosters
- Issue certification cards
- Ensure that courses are being delivered to an acceptable AHA standard
If a complaint involving a specific instructor is brought to AHA, they involve the Training Center in the investigation and resolution of the issue.
A Training Site is any group of instructors functioning under the supervision of a Training Center.
A Training Center may also accept individual affiliate instructors who are not part of a Training Site. Yet, many centers (including Code One) only admit instructors who have a Training Site affiliation.
Since Training Centers are responsible for the Training Sites and their affiliated instructors, it is extremely important that the TC is able to trust the instructors it accepts. Here are a few examples of ways a TC can track quality at an affiliated site:
- Routine roster reviews
- Drop-in course observations
- Instructor update meetings, etc
As an AHA Training Center, Code One accepts new instructors and current instructors that are affiliated with another AHA Training Center.
Code One has a dedicated committee that meets to discuss each application. Some of the quality measures we have in place include:
- A growth strategy
- Quality assurance plan
- Having adequate equipment
- Being insured
- And plans to teach at least 50 students per year.
Once the application is reviewed against our quality measures, a decision is made on whether or not to accept a training site for alignment.
Training sites pay a fee per card issued to students. We have a 50 certification card annual minimum for each training site. A site that does not reach the minimum pays a $6.50 per card access fee for each card they were short that year.
Established Training Sites with a good history (rosters submitted timely, no quality concerns, invoices paid on time) may expand their disciplines to include ACLS and PALS. They may also opt-in to bulk purchase of AHA eCards so that they may issue their own cards to students.
Code One’s Training Site application (https://code1web.com/tsapp) includes a PDF checklist for completing the application and access to the Training Site Application web form.