A career as a respiratory therapist is both intriguing and challenging, requiring a high level of skill and adaptability. When you walk into the hospital doors, there’s an excitement about not knowing what you might encounter that shift. You’ll certainly need a high level of resilience to face the ups and downs of healthcare on a daily basis. Once you’ve become confident and competent in your foundational skills, you might wonder what available options there are when it comes to career progression as an RT. The National Board for Respiratory Care or NBRC (the body that you obtained your RRT ..read more

Auscultating, or listening to, the lung sounds of pulmonary patients is going to be something a respiratory therapist does at least 20 times a day if not much more.  Understanding what each sound is, how to categorize it, and what to do about it is such a critical skill in our field and yet it can all be very confusing for students.  Part of the puzzlement comes from the confusion about terminology over the years.  It is no wonder that this skill can be such a head scratcher for students.  In clinical rotations you hear ALL the words that have ever been used ..read more

As a Respiratory Therapist, learning about lung disease is a lifelong endeavor.  While you are in RT school, you will be introduced to a myriad of conditions.  Learning and understanding some of these diagnoses will come easy to you; others will be more complicated.  In my opinion number ONE on the list of common, but seriously complicated respiratory conditions is Asthma.  It is crucial that you have a firm grasp on asthma management as you enter your career since the disorder is so prevalent and as an RT you will be charged with educating your patients ..read more

If you’ve been around respiratory care or pulmonary medicine any length of time, you are likely very familiar with the idea of both lung compliance and airways resistance. The concept of compliance is arguably the more complex of the two, and RTs everywhere seem to be enamored by a pursuit to confirm whether a patient has low lung compliance. Chances are, you too find yourself constantly questioning your patient’s lung compliance, but no worries because you are in good company.  The simplest way to conceptualize the idea of lung compliance is to think of compliance as the lung tissue’s ab ..read more

It is obvious that positive pressure ventilation (PPV) is not a normal way to breathe, and for many years we have known that the longer someone remains on PPV, the more likely damage to the lung and other organs will occur. To begin, simply placing someone on artificial ventilation and forcing air into the lung under high flow conditions in order to create positive pressure in the airway, forcing the expansion of delicate lung tissue during inspiration is actually creating a direct opposite pressure gradient to normal spontaneous breathing. So, the question should always be pondered by all goo ..read more

Pulmonary diseases can be very sneaky, developing subtly over time with very little outward signs or symptoms.  When these diseases are underrecognized and undertreated it can lead to increased damage to the lungs, faster progression of the disease and worsening quality of life.  Luckily we can catch them early with Pulmonary Function Tests.   Pulmonary function tests are a series of noninvasive tests that tell you how well a patient’s lungs are working.  They measure the lungs’ volumes, capacities, rates of flow and how well they exchange gases. &n ..read more

So here we are… not another formula, right? No worries. This one is actually quite straight forward and relatively easy to work out. The tricky part lies in the interpretation of the result – isn’t that always seemingly the case. But, it’s ok. You’re either a respiratory therapy student or a RT who is in pursuit of greater knowledge, so once you have taken a moment to review and digest some key concepts, you will be well on your way to putting the Winter’s formula into practice and with great efficiency the more you use it. To begin, you must recognize that every formula renders a result only ..read more

It’s no secret that both the Therapist Multiple Choice (TMC) exam and Clinical Simulations Exam (CSE) are designed to be challenging. Atop your RT education which no doubt took grit to finish, you now are faced with the seemingly daunting task of passing one of the most important tests of your career… and, your RT career cannot really even begin until you have made it past the infamous National Board for Respiratory Care (NBRC) exam. Remember, you must have credentials in order to gain professional licensure in most States in the US, so you may as well do it (the test) right the first time ..read more

Table of Contents The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) provides criteria for the diagnosis and management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Although all patients may have their own unique course with COPD, the GOLD stages are a good starting place for clinicians to determine COPD severity.   The GOLD stages of COPD categorize the disease by severity to help clinicians manage symptoms, slow the progression, and improve quality of life. The four stages range from mild disease to very severe. How Prevalent is COPD? According to the American Lun ..read more

Introduction: Breathe In, Breathe Out Nowadays it’s all too common that we’ll find ourselves rushing around, stressing ourselves out to the point of no return. Have you ever felt so panicked that it felt like you couldn’t breathe?  Sometimes there is a bigger problem at hand that needs to be fixed, but you might be surprised at how much learning a breathing technique can help you in situations like these.  We know what you’re thinking – that a breathing exercise isn’t going to help you quell the nerves for your test or meeting.  However, we think that you’ll be pleased with t ..read more