Respiratory Therapy 101: Just Keep Breathing

Maybe the boring is finished now that week one of orientation is finally over, although hope is often a cruel mistress. Today was the most mind-numbing experience of my entire life. I’m considering downing half a bottle of whiskey just to put my poor brain cells out of their misery; after all, is it not written that “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy?”

I was in the hospital at 6:25. This is no small feat for me as I have been working nights for years and my brain’s inclination is to be grinding to a halt at that time. Regardless, I was there at 6:25. My trainer and I did something which I absolutely can not remember, and then we got breakfast.

Instead of the clinically oriented things I was hoping for, it was still more corporate compliance and HIPAA. At this point I know more than I ever cared to about billing regulations, fraud, and privacy. Indeed, should anybody come up to me and demand to know the private information of a patient so that they can go double-bill with a slightly altered DRG and defraud the government to gain funds with which they will sell the aforementioned private information to corrupt narcotics smugglers from Colombia, I know that my first actions should be to immediately notify the corporate compliance officer and hire a good attorney to guide me through the thousands of hours of depositions that will surely follow.

The end of the day was a little better. I did get to begin some of the clinical education, like an ABG test and some pharmacology review. The orientation to Respiratory Therapy here promises to be a lengthy process. I filled out all the P&P papers today, and some of the clinical ones, but I still have an entire three-ring binder chock full of papers to complete in addition to the employee manual (several hundred pages) and the folder full of general info to examine. I’ll take a picture and post it later…it’s quite the stack of paper.

Hopefully I can resume the usual madness here soon. Stay tuned. Until the madness resumes, why not go check out the works of Skywriter? Her writing is really excellent and always makes you think a bit. This post in regards to the unexplained and the mysterious that we often ponder left me mellowed and thinking, and that is a good way to be. I’ll leave you with her words:

I think of Shakespeare’s immortal words: We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. Whether our dreams are that of order and truth and logic, or the unbidden and unexplained, I can’t help but ponder how utterly insignificant we human beings truly are in the unknown inter-workings of our world. Suddenly, I feel strangely small, and ever so alone.