Respiratory Therapy 101 Just Keep BreathingRespiratory Therapy 101 Just Keep BreathingRespiratory Therapy 101 is a blog about my life in the world of medicine. I am a respiratory therapist, and my job is to make sure that people keep breathing. It is an important job because if they are not breathing, they are not doing anything else. 
Articles
What do you WANT?
2008-06-09 05:32:00 You may have noticed that I am not posting quite as much lately. That is because the RT Burnout Meter is about to burst through the roof. The pressure is building and the waters are getting high here at Sunny Flats, and the dam is about to burst open. My goal is not to be standing ... More About: Business
I need one of these
2008-06-06 19:24:00 We could use one of these at the hospital. It would save a lot of time and aggravation for the folks on the Memory Floor.
Evita O2 sensor problems?
2008-06-06 03:55:00 Lately I have experienced a number of ventilator problems. Here at Sunny Flats we use the Drager Evita ventilator, which up until now I have found to be an excellent piece of equipment. It’s reliable, user-friendly, and packed with all the modes and features an RT could dream of. It’s easy to find what you’re ... More About: Problems , Sensor
Pulse Oximetry: overused
2008-06-05 04:07:00 A big hearty thank you! goes out today to “Too old to work, too young to retire.” TOTWTYTR is a paramedic who writes a blog about many things, but the post that caught my eye was entitled The One Where He Rants About Pulse Oximetry. Pulse oximetry is vastly overused by everybody. Instead of taking two ...
Bad news
2008-06-02 04:14:00 I just got word that a former co-worker of mine has died. This is deeply saddening. She was a kind woman, always with a happy word and an optimistic point of view. She was sweet-tempered and thoroughly likable in every way. Anytime we worked together it was a good night; she was just a kind, ... More About: News , Bad News
Tales from the ambulance
2008-06-01 22:56:00 I’d like to add Crusty Ambulance Driver to the blogroll here. Crusty’s got some great stories from the field that illustrate perfectly why the cost of healthcare is spiralling upwards in our country. Go on over and check them out… I happened to be on an ambulance the other day doing a critical care transfer. I ... More About: Tales
?huh
2008-06-01 05:42:00 I was just on Yahoo! and I noticed that among their top ten searches, “staphylococcus aureus” came in at number ten. I have no idea what to make of that. I didn’t even think most people could spell it, let alone would bother to search for it.
How to make your boss have a stroke
2008-05-31 03:46:00 One of my hobbies is to get people going. If you know exactly where the line is, you can walk along it for a few minutes without stepping over it. This gets people pretty worked up, but when they discover that you’re just kidding they usually see some humor in things. And the agitation is ... More About: Boss , Make , Stroke
Nosebleed
2008-05-30 03:19:00 I gave myself a nosebleed. I had an itch and I was trying to scratch it when I made a slight miscalculation. Instead of lightly scratching a minor itch, I accidentally rammed my fingernail into the soft flesh of the median of my nose. I don’t know why I am sharing this with all of ... More About: Nosebleed
Tech troubles
2008-05-25 04:11:00 I may be less posty than usual this week. My computer has picked up some sort of virus and has been very sick. In medical terms, it’s in the ICU on BiPAP and not looking especially well. I’ve busted out some new antivirus and deep-scanning stuff and hopefully I can remove or quarantine whatever offending ... More About: Tech
100,000!
2008-05-23 06:06:00 I have just rolled over 100,000 hits since the initiation of this blog! I can’t believe that people actually read the things that I write. Thanks for reading, readers. Tell me, what can I do to keep you here? What do you like and not like? Inquiring minds want to know. ...
Bad, worse, and much worse
2008-05-23 02:14:00 Bad: somebody you know is your patient on the ventilator. Worse: they are a respiratory therapist, they are wide awake, and they are watching you. Much Worse: the ventilator completely and utterly malfunctions and you are forced to manually ventilate while somebody helps you change the ventilator out. Oh yes. It was an interesting day. ...
Six things that burn me out
2008-05-21 03:43:00 Today I will be stealing a meme from MonkeyGirl. She’s been feeling a bit burned out lately and as such has invented her own thingee. She calls it “Six Things That Are Causing My Burn out.” Since it sounds like an easy game to play here’s my list: 1. Management. The bosses here are constantly playing a ...
Stupidity knows no bounds
2008-05-20 03:28:00 I was asked to perform a laboratory draw on a patient in the ER the other day. Lab draws are done by us RTs as a last resort: typically we are called only when nursing is totally unable to obtain blood from a vein. There are exceptions (the odd lazy nurse) but mostly a lab ... More About: Stupidity , Bounds
Timing
2008-05-17 20:10:00 The ER where I work has music piped in overhead. It plays at a soft volume, but if you stop and listen you can hear the strains of modern alt-rock over the roar of the ER. I was walking out of the room of an elderly patient who we had just spent 20 minutes resuscitating. As ... More About: Timing
See:
2008-05-17 05:49:00 Interesting stuff out there tonight. From”Not Totally Rad” we have a flouroscopic series showing a sword-swallower in action. It’s fascinating to watch: I had a hard time with the first ten seconds or so but then it seems to clear up some. And over at the RT cave, Rick Frea has an intriguing ethical problem that ...
Quote of the day:
2008-05-17 02:58:00 “One of my patients thinks I am trying to kill her and my other guy does nothing but shit and moan. That’s why I’m back here eating donuts.” Sort of sums it all up, really. More About: Quote Of The Day , Quote
Win some, lose some:
2008-05-16 02:20:00 Win some: Three year old girl presents with multiple facial lacerations. She is screaming, terrified, frightened of the pain and of the strange people in white and blue who are doing things to her. With a little smooth talk from a pedi nurse and a little bit of modern chemistry, she calms down enough that the ...
Attention:
2008-05-15 02:30:00 If you have no interest in participating in your own care, please do us all a favor and stay the hell home. That is all. More About: Attention
Question
2008-05-12 03:46:00 A question for my fellow RTs. I had a patient on A/C, low volume/high rate sort of strategy. His ABGs were holding steady with a respiratory acidosis, pH around 7.3 and PaCO2 in the high 50’s no matter what we did to him. His peak pressures were rising consistently so we switched him to PCV just ... More About: Question
Direct Hit
2008-05-11 03:19:00 One thing I’ve mostly avoided in the years of my career has been contact with disgusting body fluids. I’ve narrowly escaped rivers of liquid stool, lakes of spilled urine, pools of tacky blood and fountains of vomit. I’ve narrowly dodged the gale-force flatus of a 400-pound man who was facedown on the floor. Whether through ... More About: Direct
The Flesh-Eating Bacteria Room
2008-05-10 02:32:00 We recently had a young lady who came into the hospital with abdominal pain. She was explored, declared healthy, and sent to the floor. There she became septic, came back to the ICU, and promptly died from a massive infection with whatever microbe it is that causes necrotizing fasciitis. This was very upsetting to me ... More About: Bacteria , Room , Eating
Numbers:
2008-05-08 14:33:00 I often suspect that medical numbers are sort of made up. <a href=”http://dilbert.com/strips/com ic/2008-05-07/”><img src=”http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_str ip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/0000 0/5000/500/5651/5651.strip.gif” border=”0″ /></a> I think this exact scenario happens a lot more than we’d like to admit. More About: Numbers
Thought for the day:
2008-05-08 05:02:00 It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~ Krishnamurti More About: Thought
A good thing for once:
2008-05-05 17:35:00 For once, news about healthcare that seems to be positive. I refer to an article in todays Times about Kendal at Hanover, a nursing home affiliated with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center way up in New Hampshire. Kendal at Hanover is apparently not your usual nursing home. For one thing, they apparently focus on giving the elderly a ... More About: Good , Thing
The importance of breathing
2008-05-04 05:15:00 People often ask a lot of general questions about respiratory therapy. I often get asked what I like about the job, what I hate about the job, or what drove me into it. At the hospital, patients (who tend to classify everybody into the category of doctor or nurse) often fail to understand exactly who ...
To vent or not to vent?
2008-05-03 04:50:00 Content coming tomorrow. Until then: the Respiratory Therapy Cave has an awesome article up about ventilators and the end of life decisions that often come with them. Head on over and take a look. More About: Vent
Panic
2008-05-02 20:53:00 The lack of content here is due in part to a recent panic at the hospital caused by a highly visible conflict between upper management and RT management that has escalated into a full-blown administrative war. It’s been distracting to me. That plus we’ve had a lack of interesting patients recently. So to substitute for my ... More About: Panic
Humor:
2008-04-28 06:29:00 As promised, something funny to compensate for the bitterness. From Basic Instructions, I give you one of my favorite images of all time (click to enlarge): It’s perfect, isn’t it? (Image stolen from Basic Instructions without a hint of a scrap of permission. Copyright belongs to the comedic genius Scott Meyer.) ... More About: Humor
Word of the Day:
More articles from this author:2008-04-27 05:12:00 The word of the day today is Polybabydadia, a word which I have stolen without a hint of permission from the ever inventive Panda Bear MD. The rest of this post unexpectedly deteriorated into a bitter tirade, but you should be used to that by now. Polybabydadia as I see it is the condition of having ... More About: Word , Word of the Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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