September 23, 2024
Respiratory therapists at LHSC
Respiratory therapists (RT) at LHSC support patients from their first breath to their last and every breath in between.
They are found on teams across the organization including:
- in delivery rooms supporting baby and birth parent;
- in the Emergency Department working with patients in crisis or experiencing shortness of breath;
- in the operating rooms supporting anaesthesiologists;
- in the intensive care and critical care units looking after critically ill patients; and
- helping to make the transition easier at end-of-life for palliative patients.
Every day is different
I enjoy being an RT because every day is different, especially as a charge technologist where I answer calls to support RTs across University Hospital.
What I find most meaningful in my work is helping people at different stages from recovery in a critical situation, to providing dignity at end-of-life so people can pass away more peacefully.
At University Hospital, RTs work with others on care teams. We are close with our nursing and physician colleagues, and as RTs, we feel supported by our clinical colleagues and feel we all work cohesively as a team for patient care.
How patients are supported by RTs
One of the ways RTs support patients is through intubation. Intubation is used in patient care when needed on critically ill patients or patients undergoing surgery.
To see a simulation of an intubation of a patient please watch the video below.
In intubation, RTs use a ventilator. Ventilators are a form of life support that takes over breathing from a patient who cannot breathe on their own. There are many reasons a patient may need a ventilator – a patient may need to be put to sleep for surgery, they might be critically ill and may have to be placed under a medically induced coma, or they may have lost the ability to breathe on their own.
Air and oxygen are attached to a ventilator, and it works by pushing air into a patient’s lungs. The screen on the ventilator tells RTs a lot about a patient’s lungs from whether they have restrictive lung disease to whether they have completely healthy lungs.
Personal path to respiratory therapy
I initially thought I wanted to be a teacher and was taking university classes in English and History but felt that it wasn’t what I really wanted. As I searched for other options, I heard about respiratory therapy and became very interested – applying, and getting into, Fanshawe College’s program.
Until the pandemic, I don’t think respiratory therapy was a career people knew too much about. I’ve heard from many other RTs that they found out about this career path either through other people or other roundabout ways.
Since the pandemic though, I’ve seen more people are aware of RTs and what we do, especially when talking about ventilators.
The RT program is a lot of work and quite time-consuming. Most people have some sort of post-secondary education before starting the respiratory therapy program, but there are some who enter the program from high school. You can have a degree, or pre-health at the college level and it really sets you up for success for the RT program by learning the fast pace of post-secondary education.
I did my clinical placement at LHSC and knew it was where I wanted to work after graduation. I love the healthcare team and I really like the different opportunities available to RTs at LHSC. I graduated in 2016 and started working here soon after.
Impactful patient care
One of the benefits of being an RT at LHSC is the variety of areas and teams that RTs can work in because it is an acute care centre.
There are more opportunities to serve patients in different areas such as cardiac, transplant and critical care that you might not get at smaller centres.
While RTs are an integral part of care teams across LHSC, patients may or may not remember them specifically.
Because of the nature of the work of RTs, we often operate in the background, helping patients when they are really sick.
When the caregiver or family is in the patient's room, we introduce ourselves and let them know we look after the breathing machines. However, patients aren’t always aware of our presence as we support their breathing during their surgery or stay. Even though we aren’t remembered in the same way as other members of the health-care team, we continue to be motivated to do our work because it is important, and we are proud to help patients during their time of need.
Are you interested in growing your career at LHSC? Check out current opportunities online or connect with the Recruitment Team recruitment@lhsc.on.ca to learn more.