Students, Every group is worse than the group before.

Quick Tips for Students.

1. Take Report, if you don't have a census sheet, suck it up, start scribbling on a blank sheet of paper.
2. Write down words you don't know and look them up later.
3. If the RT you're with doesn't know the answer, that doesn't mean you don't have to know the answer, look it up later.
4. Be proactive, many RT departments don't have the preception structure nurses do so you're with someone who probably hasn't been officially trained to know how to use you.  They're nervous about being wrong or a bad teacher or teaching you all the things you already know.  Be up front, tell them you don't know anything even if you think you do and follow them like a duckling.  Even the ones who act bitchy about you doing that will talk about how good you were when you are gone.  The "cool" students (the ones who relax and laugh the whole day with the RTs instead of learning) are always the ones most complained about.
5. Even if you don't want to work at that hospital, act like you do.  When you graduate your teachers send out recommendations to hospitals and they'll sometimes be too real about your skills and personality.  RT departments also all tend to know eachother.  Its a small society and being a douchebag will get you blackballed from a hospital you've never even been to.
6. Get at LEAST 1 year, more preferably 3 years of ICU experience right out of school.  Doing anything else destroys your resume.  3 years of ICU experience, then open your oxygen supply company.  Your life-goals will thank you.
7. Get your Bachelor of Science in Respiratory Care.  Get it asap.  Boise State has an online completion program and KU has one.  I prefer KU.  Its going to be mandatory soon and while you'll be allowed to practice with an associates it will be hard to get a job.  Physicians Assistants used to be Associate Degrees and the PAs who didn't get a higher degree find it very difficult to get a job, even with experience.