BlogOct 21, 2024
Respiratory Therapists: Critical to Respiratory Care
Respiratory Care Week is observed the third week of every October. Organized by the American Association for Respiratory Care, the observance highlights the critical role respiratory therapists (RT) and health care professionals play in managing and treating respiratory diseases in patients with pulmonary conditions.
Select Specialty Hospital RTs specialize in ventilator liberation—helping people return to breathing on their own without mechanical support. Our nationwide network of hospitals treat more than 22,000 respiratory patients annually.
Upon arrival at a Select Specialty Hospital, RTs work to evaluate their patient’s lung function and play an important role in forming an individualized care plan. Our RTs work daily with their patients to monitor and improve their respiratory health by carefully weaning them from mechanical ventilation while facilitating exercises to strengthen their lungs. Working closely with our patients and families, our RTs have the opportunity to build close relationships and become key drivers in their recovery journey.
The RT is complemented by and collaborates with a larger physician-led interdisciplinary team, that includes board certified pulmonologists, pulmonary program directors and respiratory therapists.
The following collection of patient success stories highlight how our RTs and the wider interdisciplinary team care for our patients.
Respiratory Care Patient Success Stories
Paul Secosky
Paul Secosky’s shortness of breath and coughing had gotten so severe that the 67-year-old retired electrician from Hopwood, Pennsylvania, made his way to a nearby hospital’s emergency room. Turns out, Paul was in respiratory failure and had an infection in one lung that led to sepsis, a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body has an extreme response to infection.
Ten days later, Paul had improved enough that he no longer needed the ventilator and intensive care, but he was on high levels of oxygen that dropped significantly with any movement. He was too weak to walk or take care of himself. His physicians recommended that Paul regain his strength at Select Specialty Hospital – Laurel Highlights.
From there, respiratory therapists worked with Paul on breathing exercises and gradually he needed less oxygen. His chest tube was also removed.
Simultaneously – and spaced throughout the day to allow recovery time – Paul participated in physical and occupational therapy. He progressively built up his strength and endurance with frequent walks, climbing stairs and participating in activities of daily living such as showering and dressing.
One month after admission, Paul was able to tolerate higher levels of therapy on lower levels of oxygen and was discharged to a rehabilitation hospital to continue his recovery.
He is now home, cooking, walking and working in his yard.
“Rehab has gotten me better,” he said. “The respiratory team is amazing.”
Justin Sanders
Justin Sanders’ life changed in the blink of an eye. One minute the 31-year-old casino manager from Detroit was planning a quiet evening with a friend. The next, he was fighting for his life, the victim of a shooting.
One bullet pierced his heart; another shattered his femur.
Six weeks after his injuries, Justin was stable enough to leave Ascension’s intensive care unit for the next step in his recovery, where Justin hopefully could get back to breathing on his own. His family chose Select Specialty Hospital – Macomb.
At admission, Justin had a tracheostomy, which is a surgically-made slit in his windpipe with a tube that connected to a ventilator. Justin couldn’t walk, talk, eat or think clearly.
His goal was to overcome those challenges and get back to his family and the job he loved.
His journey to breathe on his own again began with a respiratory therapist lowering the ventilator settings so that Justin’s lungs were doing more of the work, which strengthened them.
“He (the therapist) was one of the people I appreciated most because he came into the room and explained what was going to happen. I didn’t have to ask,” Natalie (Justin’s mom) said. The therapist told her what they were doing, what each of the numbers on the machine meant and which direction those numbers should head.
“They committed to getting Justin off the ventilator and it happened in like a week and a half,” she said. “That was huge to me.”
That milestone was soon followed by another. A speech-language pathologist connected a special valve to Justin’s tracheostomy that pushed air through his vocal cords, enabling Justin to speak.
Justin was happy with the progress he made.
“I am off the ventilator, I no longer have the trach and I can feed myself again,” he said.
Three weeks after he came to Select Specialty Hospital in a bed, Justin left in a wheelchair, ready to start the next phase of his recovery – inpatient rehabilitation at a different hospital. At that point, he wasn’t yet walking but he got back on his feet at that hospital.
Alessia Cruz
One day, Alessia felt sick to her stomach. She remembers thinking, “I’ll just take some TUMS and it will go away.” When her symptoms escalated and what initially felt like heartburn turned into three days of chest pain, Alessia feared she was having a heart attack. She called 911 and was taken to Virtua Voorhees Hospital.
The problem was her gallbladder, but she hemorrhaged during surgery to remove it and developed pancreatitis. She transferred to the intensive care unit at Penn Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia and needed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a machine that pumped for her heart when she could not. She was intubated and connected to a ventilator, all while in a medically induced coma.
After nearly two months at Penn Presbyterian, Alessia stabilized and transferred to Select Specialty Hospital- Willingboro. Alessia couldn’t breathe, eat, walk or talk on her own. She was going to need to rely on her persevering spirit to heal and get back home.
Alessia said she was so afraid she would never get off the ventilator that at times she needed mental health intervention to stay focused on her recovery and to do what the care team asked her to do.
“The respiratory therapists and rehabilitation team never gave up on me,” she said. “They kept coming back day after day to push me, even when I was scared and making not-so-good decisions that prevented me from getting better.”
Approximately six weeks after admission, she reached a milestone: breathing on her own. She said she knew she “was going to make it” when she was able to breathe on her own for nine hours one day. Within a few days, she no longer needed the ventilator and it was wheeled from her room.
Alessia says the entire Select Specialty Hospital team rallied around her to make her feel safe and for the first time in her life, she felt like she had a team rooting for her.
Learn more about Select Specialty Hospital’s pulmonary rehabilitation/ventilator liberation program.