Respiratory Therapy 101: Just Keep Breathing

This is a question that was posed to Google, that somehow wound up leading somebody to this website. I think it’s a fair question. Most people have probably never even heard of a respiratory therapist because we are typically lost in the sea of white coats. Even some of the nurses I have worked with don’t understand what we do; a few have mistakenly believed that RRT is synonymous with CNA. Their misperceptions have been corrected.

Respiratory therapists as a group spend a lot of time with people whose breathing is dangerously abnormal. This is an important thing to do because if people are not breathing then they will probably not be doing very much else.

The first thing RTs typically do to patients is to assess them. Reading through their charts, looking at lab values such as pulmonary function studies and blood gases, and actually listening to and examining the patient are all important. You can learn a lot from breath sounds, lab values, general appearance and other clinical signs. Assessment is important because if you don’t know or understand what is wrong with your patient, then you cannot possibly hope to fix them.

After assessment, RTs treat. Some hospitals (typically larger hospitals) have Therapist-Driven protocols, which allow RTs to independently assign treatments to patients who are placed on the RT service. Smaller or less “with it” hospitals still have physicians writing orders that RTs are to carry out. On the medical floors, there are a lot of treatment modalities. We do everything from nebulizer treatments to chest physiotherapy to breathing exercises with our patients. We draw arterial blood samples to analyze how well a patients breathing is working. Sometimes we do bedside pulmonary function studies, or assist with metered-dose inhalers.

In emergency rooms and at in-house emergencies like cardiac arrests (the infamous “code blue!”) we respond and assist with everything from the early stages of CPR to the intubation and ventilation of patients whose breathing has ceased. In intensive care units, we run ventilators that keep people breathing while they are unconscious or too sick to breathe on their own. We use CPAP and BiPAP to assist peoples breathing in less-invasive ways. In some places, we insert chest tubes and arterial lines. It is a job that can be dull and routine one moment and then code-red screaming panic the next.

My advice to anyone considering being an RT? Find someone near you who is an RT, and ask to shadow them for a day. You’ll need to sign some privacy papers and some release forms and stuff, but then you’ll get a chance to observe the everyday life of an RT in action.

That being said, it might be more fun to try and shadow at a larger hospital. Most of my days at Our Lady of Immaculate Grace are spent sipping coffee and hoping that the hospital doesn’t go under before the day ends, but that’s life for you in an underfunded rural hospital. Don’t get me wrong, though: life as an RT is great, and the job can be the most rewarding thing you’ll ever get a chance to do. If you’re interested, try it out. I like my job, and so do most other RTs out there.

For more information, check out the AARC’s website. It’s a good resource for learning more!