Showing Respect
This morning on the way to work, an ambulance went by. People, including me, pulled off to the side of the road and allowed it to rush by without any delay. A few days back, a funeral procession went by the house while I was getting mail. People pulled over and let the cars in the procession go by. A few even stepped out of their cars and bowed their heads.
The best thing about living here in Lexington, Missouri is the people. They work hard, they play hard, and they are genuinely good people. Living just a little outside of Kansas City, it would be easy to try to make ourselves a suburb, but people out here don't care much for the "burb" life. We are a rural community with a couple of highways going different directions. Part of our lives is deciding which highway is the most attractive to us, but those same highways often bring us back home later in life.
RT is kind of like that. We may branch off into sleep, EEG, or some other "sub-field", but eventually the good ones all come back home. In doing so, we build a career field of highly trained and qualified people with experiences from outside of our field that can make us all better, just like the child who leaves Lexington for college and comes back to share his or her knowledge with the rest of us. We all benefit. We gain respect from outside of RT, as well as respect for each other. Showing that respect happens when we "talk up" each other, when we talk highly of respiratory therapy or other staff members.
In my opinion, respect is one thing that is easy to give but isn't given too often. Make an effort to show some respect today. Talk up a co-worker. Talk good about one of your doctors or nurses. Listen, don't talk, during a conversation. You may find if you show respect to others, they will make an effort to show some respect back.
That's just my opinion.