A Career as a Respiratory Therapist
Ever wished to become a respiratory therapist? Wondering what the interesting career opportunity of the modern world entails? Here’s a quick job description, before the job seeker goes any further into the exploration of this wonderful field of medicine.
Basically, the main job oftherapistsis to deliver respiratory care and therapeutic treatments to patients. These patients normally have cardiopulmonary disorders, or, in other, simpler terms, breathing disorders. What a respiratory therapist also does, is the evaluation itself of the patient who has trouble breathing. This important and high-responsibility task includes the performance of various different diagnostic tests.
Fortunately for those who do not enjoy working with patients very closely, the job requires only limited physical examinations, but those may be necessary in some situations as well. However, the full responsibility of the patient’s treatment and condition is not entirely in the respiratory therapist’s hands. After all, a respiratory therapist works under the careful supervision of a physician, and thus is limited to what he or she can decide upon for the patient and his or her current status.
Respiratory therapists are a relatively popular position, holding about 106,000 jobs in the year 2008. Most of these, in fact, a grand total of eighty-one percent worked within the respiratory care, pulmonary medicine, or anesthesiology departments of hospitals, so it is obviously more of a hospital job. However, others were found to work in physicians' or other health care practitioners' offices as well as in different nursing care facilities. Some even worked in consumer goods' rental firms which supply respiratory equipment for home use.
What are a respiratory therapist’s education necessities? Primarily, one must have, at the very least, anassociate degreeto be able to function as a respiratory therapist. However, most programs which focus on training people to work in this field offer a much more respected bachelor’s degree as well, or even a master’s degree.Students can take courses at many places, ranging from colleges to medical schools, to even theForces. They will be expected to take many science-oriented courses such ashuman anatomyandmicrobiologyas well asphysiologyandphysics. Besides this knowledge, a respiratory therapist must also have the basic skills of being able to pay attention to detail, work on a team, follow instructions, and usea computer.
Respiratory therapists earn quite well, usually a median annual salary of $53,330 as claimed by research in 2009. It is also a decently pleasant job, featuring the cooperation with all types of patients from infant to grandparent, as well as the main physician.
