I have worked at facilities with RT driven protocols as well as those without any sort of protocol what so ever. It seems that in a lot of facilities RT's do not have the initiative required to implement protocols. Personally I hate giving q4 treatments to an asthmatic whose bronchospasm resolved three days previous; or treatments to Lung CA, TB, or Pulmonary edema (none of these produced bronchospasm directly!). I am an educator and I try to promote to my students the need for more RT intervention in patient treatment ordering, be it directly through protocols or indirectly with MD interaction. Any suggestions on how to motivate my students to be more than cookie cutter blanket therapy therapist??

Teach them, and have them practice, persuasive argument. Gather up facts, organize them, figure out exactly what you want, then present to the doc. The important piece, I've found, is to anticipate the return argument and have a rebuttal ready. Docs like the exchange, and respect the presentation. They don't always agree, that is not their job, but they do respct. The next time around, your chances improve. Sometimes  anticipating the return argument gives you some idea of what the doc is trying to accomplish and your constructive input blows the doc away. Score one more point ... Alternatively, approaching a busy doc with a half-baked argument causes a loss of respect.

I work at a large facility that is protocol dependant.  We also have a respiratory program affiliated with my facility.  In order to help the students understand the way that protocols work we suggested to their clinical director that they have the students write their own protocols and grade them on it.  It could mimic a medical protocol or they could write their own on how they get to work.  Something simply to help them understand the logic process of the protocol.

 

Hello Mike

I thought your post was quite interesting.  I too have been having a similar experience.  I handled it by reinforcing over and over (at different times of course) the need to come from a place of knowledge, purpose and confidence when speaking with the medical staff and making an “informed” suggestion.  Even without TDP, it has been my experience that speaking from an informed center with a solid knowledge base works almost exactly as an established protocol.   In fact, it may eventually lead to the creation of protocols.  This is the way we are working through this issue.  Thanks for bringing it up.

I was a past instructor with CCC back in 2001 at North Hollywood.  The curriculum was far too rigid for me and we were mandated to not deviate from the written program at all.  I also found that in an atomosphere of the student has to always be right because they are paying for the pgm and retention is the key word, that I could not produce a therapist I would want to treat me or my family member  Sure left no room for creativity and critical thinking.  Very suffocating, at least I felt so.  I sure hope your experience with them is different from mine.    Here at Western Career College in NoCal, the stress is on creativity and independent thought, and allowing the educators to shine in their own ways.  We really have an incredible program.

-P-