Blogs

I would say yes to both of those...students are accustomed to certain things and a certain type of work environment when they graduate...unfortunately the real world tends to be less idealistic. It's one of the reasons that a respiratory degree has become a good stepping stone to many other health care degrees. That and I have found many of the students that I've had interactions with over the last four or five years are very money conscious...which is also unfortunate. A really good respiratory therapist is loved and appreciated by both medical staff and patients alike...they are not generally wealthy in a monetary sense. :)

I spent a lot of time this year attending conferences around the country. I made it to about 5 state respiratory conferences and there seems to be a pattern. Most states have one or two hospitals that are very progressive. Protocol driven and full of advanced practice opportunities (insertion of A Lines, intubations, etc). The rest seem very content with status quo or do not know how to get to the next level. I tend to find as a new grad your expectation is that you will be working in the progressive hospital that fosters an atmosphere of continual learning. Given your state may only have one or two of these facilities most of us will work somewhere else. As a result we become very disillusioned and feel maybe we made the wrong career choice. I've hired therapist in the 3-5 year window of experience that were contemplating a change in profession but find them to be very happy when you let them use what they learned. As managers we need to work together to ensure that we are all maximizing the resources of our profession. If you're one of those progressive hospitals what are you doing to help out the hospitals around you? If you're a young therapist that feels like this isn't what you signed up for, I encourage you to talk to your manager, let them know what you need and if they don't seem to have an interest in moving in that direction find the progressive hospital that will.

As a younger therapist, (10 years) I once felt just as disillusioned at the 5 year mark. I was in a small department with little room to advance, learn, or help make decisions in patient care. As a student I was in rotations where the patients were taken care of by the team. The hospitals felt full of excitement and wonder! I finally found that I had to leave my small department and move to a hospital that had an environment closer to what my education was like. Maybe your young therapists need to redirect their attention to a job search.

I've seen some RT departments with pretty toxic work environments. I think that has a lot to do with it. Us old war horses need to be more mindful how we talk around (or to) new grads and fresh hires.
Times have changed and this is not the health care many of us signed up for 20 + years ago. We're all trying to adapt to different staffing patterns and increased demand for our services, but we need to help the newbies as much as possible ................