William “Fritz” Sticht keeps cutting-edge labs running

The first thing people always ask Fritz Sticht is, if his first name is William, why is he called Fritz? “I’m named after my grandfather ─ William Frederick Sticht. Fritz came from Frederick and he was called Fritz,” he said, solving the mystery.

A native of Hamburg, N.Y., Sticht is the skills education technician for the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and plays a crucial role in preparing PharmD students for their careers.

“My main job is to make sure the facility is prepared and ready for faculty and students so they can walk in and be ready to meet their educational objectives,” he said. “I don’t want them fighting with the technology and the space.”

Outside of work, Sticht can often be found at a local ice rink, scoring goals or coaching with the Binghamton Jr. Devils. He’s been a lifelong hockey player, and has coached youth hockey for more than a decade.

He came to healthcare education in a roundabout way. A broadcast engineer by trade, Sticht found himself searching for a position when his employer, Adelphia, went bankrupt. “A number of us lost our positions,” he said. “I had a friend at the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, where they were putting together an airway management video series. I ended up as their in-house media production designer and started creating educational materials for the emergency medical residents.

“And then one day a rubber man showed up,” he said. Meaning, of course, a mannequin to be used in immersive simulations.

“I had zero experience with any of the mannequins, which were purchased under a Homeland Security grant,” Sticht said. “But working with the chief emergency medicine residents, a trauma program for the emergency department was created that ran for three semesters. The concept was pitched to the University at Buffalo (UB), and it was a perfect storm.”

The timing was right, he said, because Dr. Ralph Behling, a 90-year-old alumni with all of his wits about him, was interested in the program and donated funding to establish the Behling Simulation Center at UB.

Sticht, who was integral to the design of the Behling Center, spent six years there, three as lead technician and three as administrator director, before joining the staff at Binghamton.

He also provided input into the lab designs for SOPPS. “It’s rewarding to see your thoughts and ideas pan out, and all of the systems in place and working,” he said. “The procedures come to a point where things flow smoothly.”

“We have a fantastic team here and it takes a team effort to make this entire operation run,” he said. “I think we do a pretty good job of it and I have to give others credit because there’s no way any of us could do this by ourselves.”

The faculty provide the content and know their educational objectives, Sticht said. “But I know the capability of the mannequins and the systems — and enough medical stuff to get myself into trouble!” he joked. “But seriously, I work with the faculty on the scenarios. It’s a full production, like a theater production, that we can run through with students three to four times in a three-hour period.”

For students, Sticht said it’s a love-hate relationship any time they have to do an immersive session. “They hate it because it puts them on the spot and they have to pull from their knowledge base and put that knowledge into practice with a patient in front of them who will be better or worse depending on their decisions,” he said. “The important piece is that we let them make those decisions here by creating a safe environment where they can be comfortable making the decision and talk about those decisions afterward, regardless of the outcome.”

The faculty conduct a debriefing after students run through a scenario, with Sticht sometimes taking the lead as long as the faculty are there as the content experts.

“We use the advocacy-inquiry model for debriefing where we ask, ‘What happened? What went well? What can we do better? Which forces the students to contribute to the debriefing,” he said. “Ideally there are 10 students in a session and two or three of them at a time are in the room to manage the patient. The remaining students are in a debriefing room where they can watch their classmates manage the patient via live stream. The students managing the patient give it a wrap and debrief as a group. Then we rinse and repeat with another group of students — who could be following the same scenario or a different one — getting a chance in the “hot-seat.”

Once a scenario is developed, it can be run over and over again, Sticht said. “We have scenarios for cardio, toxicology, infectious disease, emergency, end-of-life discussions, airways, ones that bring in a social worker if needed… I see one of the best uses of this space for communication between healthcare professions and for interprofessional education.”

Coming into this position, Sticht didn’t know much about pharmacy. “At Behling at UB, I would run the scenarios but didn’t know the pharmacy content except basically what a pharmacy student can and can’t do,” he said. “Here, I see more content and the many environments they work in between our community pharmacy, simulation lab, the compounding labs… and I’m trying to streamline the spaces.

“But I’m learning. My objectives come from my discussions with faculty and their needs, but I’m still growing in this role,” Sticht said. “I’m learning every day about another responsibility of the pharmacist and trying to incorporate that into the skills space so we can teach the students how to be responsible pharmacists when they leave here.”

Sticht’s vision for the skills lab space is to “increase the number of unique experiences for the students including increasing interprofessional sessions,” he said. “Ensuring the students understand their role in the team-centered care approach will help improve patient outcomes. And after all, I reinforce a team approach to scoring goals with my hockey players, and improving patient outcomes through the support the skills lab team provides for PharmD students and faculty is the ultimate goal.”