Another preface is that I became a Registered Respiratory Therapist with the NBRC in May of 2011, so any reference that makes it sound like I have been a therapist for hundreds of years is simply assumption or a perspective from how it seems from where I am standing. I also became a state licensed and nationally registered EMT-I in 2003, so my point of view about EMT related stuff might slip in and that's where that comes from.
First, I will preface this entire blog with how optimistic I currently am about this profession. I realize how big the hill is in front of all of the entire profession as far as getting respect for doing what I am doing. I say that now so I don't have to continually repeat it in future entries.
I also think that it should be a change in the feeling of self-importance by therapists. I don't mean to be super cocky or anything, but be confident in the fact that a Respiratory Therapist is a necessary part of the team. The history of our profession may technically begin in the 60's, but our real profession milestones are somewhere in the 1990's and then again in the early 2000's.
We seem to have had a major influx of people who love trauma and emergency situations and that's great, sort of. Respiratory Therapy was pitched to me as a profession with a lot of application in a plethora of medical institutions, and I still believe it does.
The most embarrassing thing about Respiratory Therapy is the lack of acknowledgement and even understanding of the profession and its administration and history by even the practitioners in it. Have you ever looked at the wikipedia.org page for Respiratory Therapy? It is awful, its full of weird phrasing and horrible explanations of what we do. In the introduction paragraph it says something along the lines of "...respiratory therapists are an important part of the hospital code team and are in charge of oxygen delivery and give nebulizers"
While that is technically true, its like saying this about Nursing "Nurses are important parts of the code team and are in charge of giving patients blankets and reminding them to take their blood pressure medicine"
Saying "Code Team" might not be, but feels intensely uncomfortably improper. Not all emergency response teams are called "Code Teams" and maybe its just that I don't like how elementary the language portrays respiratory therapy.
I was referred to as a technician more than once recently and it bothers me. Its not just that people think the T means technician instead of therapist, but the fact that their opinion of the knowledge and ability of a therapist causes their brain to say technician instead of therapist is what needs to be confronted and corrected instead of simply trying to get them to say the correct word. People don't accidentally say Physical Technician when talking about Physical Therapy and why? You might just feel like its not the right word, and that might be because you have never heard technician used in that place, but I think its a little deeper then that.
There is nothing wrong with the word technician, but it changes the definition of what we do as clinicians.
I think I will try to split up my posts so that they aren't so scattered seeming.
