I would like to pay tribute and give well deserved recognition to a group of healthcare professionals that I have had the privilege to serve beside in the medical trenches.
Good job, fellow cohorts whether you are a certified or registered respiratory therapist because I definitely know that you have to do it all regardless of your credentials on paper. Now I know that many of my readers are scratching their heads because my column addresses public health interests and the like.
You are absolutely correct.
However, I remain humble and mindful of where I came from demographically and professionally. I have been employed at many of the hospitals located in the Mississippi Delta over a 30 year span as a respiratory therapist and in some cases, as a Mississippi licensed emergency medical technician (EMT). I have worked in managerial and diagnostic positions therefore I can relate to the heartbeats of the medical field-Respiratory Therapists as a whole.
What do they do?
Well depending on the hospital setting, they are often times the first to arrive at the scene of a Code Blue, they manage the endotracheal tube in your throat after intubation, they draw arterial blood gases to better manage your ventilator settings as well as to regulate the rate in which they manually ventilate you until you are placed on mechanical ventilation.
That sounds scripted to me because what I did not mention was the acrobatics and exercise work out that allows all of this to happen. Respiratory therapists have to multi-task, be quick thinkers and be athletic to say the least.
How else can you explain having an entire floor treatment load and then answering calls to the emergency room as well during your two therapists shift?
I shake my head now because I know God was with us all then and He still is.
Respiratory therapists are track stars… super action figures who are able to hit a flight of stairs to make it in the allotted time frame to a Code Blue or a patient in respiratory distress, speed walk or run beside a moving bed while manually “bagging” a patient in transport, double as a “chest thumper” relief person during CPR, able to read telemetry strips and recognize the various types of arrhythmias, read endotracheal tube placement chest x-rays, and yet have the tenderness and experise be in labor and delivery to care for a newborn who got off to a rough start on their born day. Whew! But wait.
That does not include the nasotracheal suctioning, pulse oxymetry checks, portable oxygen tank deliveries and transports, cleaning, assembling, and troubleshooting respiratory equipment, inventory restocking, pulmonary function tests for inpatients and outpatients, EKGs and administering aerosol “breathing treatments.”
If you are the department’s manager/supervisor, you wear multi-hats and have floor treatments. Can you believe all of this can happen in one day regardless of who called in sick in the Respiratory Therapy Department? Well I can attest that it has, it does and it will occur if you choose to accept this assignment as a respiratory therapist.
You won’t get a confetti parade, your pay won’t increase based on the number of lives that you have saved nor will a light illuminate around you when you enter a room. Just realize that once the Code Blue heroics for the moment are ended… you will be just a floor respiratory therapist. That’s all that’s visible to the unknowing eye until the next time you hear, “Respiratory Therapy to room 000 STAT” over the intercom. What’s the mindset of a respiratory therapist in that moment? Let’s roll out y’all, somebody needs us…here we come to keep you breathing today!!!
Fellow Respiratory therapists everywhere…..I honor you as unsung heroes. Dr. Evelyn Taylor-Mays, RRT, DrPh
