Respiratory Therapy

What is a Respiratory Therapist?  Healthcare professional  Diagnosis, treat, and educate patients  Work in  Hospitals  Emergency rooms  Clinics  Homecare  Education  Private enterprise  Research

Can you think of illnesses or injuries that may require a Respiratory Therapist?  Asthma  Emphysema  Premature Babies  Collapsed Lung  Injuries to the chest and lungs  Any time a person has difficulty breathing!

How do you become a Respiratory Therapist?  After High School you can attend a 2-year or 4-year college to become trained in Respiratory Therapy.  Then you take a national exam to become a Certified Respiratory Therapist (CRT).  If you choose, you can take two more national exams and become a Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT).

How much will I make as a Respiratory Therapist?  Certified Respiratory Therapists make between $43,400- $48,800/year  Registered Respiratory Therapists make between $51,400- $58,200/year

How do they assess and diagnose?  Pulmonary function testing  Blood gases  Sleep studies  Chest X-Ray  Listening to the lungs

How do they treat?  Use of sophisticated devices that administer oxygen or assist in breathing  Mechanical Ventilators  Administer medicine that is inhaled  Maintaining an airway

Who are Respiratory Therapists?  Mean age is 44 (this means that when you are graduating, there will be many job openings!)  Baby boomers will demand the services of the RT  Asthma and COPD on the rise

Typical Day  Medicinal aerosol delivery  Assessing patients  Educating  Managing mechanical ventilators  CPR  Diagnostic testing  Rounding with Doctors and others to develop care plans

Now you try…  One task of a respiratory therapist is to test how well a patient’s lungs are working.  They call this test Pulmonary Function Test.  We can simulate this test with balloons!