Another organization you may want to consider joining is the National Board for Respiratory Care (NBRC). These are the fine folks who award you the credentials you worked so hard for. Since 1960, the goal of the NBRC has been to ''evaluate professional competence of respiratory therapists,'' according to the organization website.The NBRC is a ...

My BS-o-meter has a pretty narrow scale. One of my many, many faults is that I hate feeling like someone is abusing me, my time, or my talents. Many of you feel the same though you may not admit it. In the hospital, I tired quickly of patients who already knew everything, doctors with attitudes, and nurses who did not know a BiPAP mask from a ...

As I go around and set up people on CPAP machines, I am always struck by the fact that sleep labs miss the opportunity to educate patients about what CPAP is, what goals of therapy are attainable, and how CPAP may help improve their sleep. In over a year, I have yet to have a patient tell me that the sleep lab told them anything about what they ...

I love football, but what a bunch of characters the players can be. Imagine if you, in your job, had to do a little celebration dance every time you did your job. If a guy makes a tackle, they often have to dance or do something dumb on television. Imagine a respiratory therapist making a ventilator change and then breaking in to a dance. Imagine ...

Well, Respiratory Care Week has come and gone. Another with it came another year of celebrating what respiratory therapists do, and a renrewed commitment to make next year even better. Whether we were discussing the bottom line, the amount of treatments, the workload, or just the opportunities we have to continue our education and provide our ...

The air has become crisp with the sights, sounds, and chill of fall. Halloween is on the way, so I thought an adventure down memory lane might be fun. Let's compare the costs of one of the biggest and best Halloween traditions, the candy, in the context of prices. For instance, Tootsie Rolls, one of my all time favorites, used to cost a penny a ...

You never know how much time you have left. That is the lesson learned by a New Jersey man who, while hiking his third time on the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail, passed away suddenly just 20 miles short of his goal. Robert Yerike, 67, known as ''Buffalo Bobby'' on the trail, was hiking his third ''through-hike,'' going from the starting point at ...

I always wanted to be a musician. Actually, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer. I spent hours outside at night looking at the stars. First, it was just with my eyes, then a pair of binoculars, then a telescope I won selling seeds. But underneath it all, I wanted to play music. I sang in every choir I could find (turns out a bass is a ...

We have all heard the old saying ''you get out of it what you put into it.'' I read that this morning on a website, and that still holds true, even today. In respiratory care, when young people ask me for career advice, that is usually what I tell them. Depending on what they put in to the career field, their returns will be good or bad.  I ...

USA Today is again running a story they have been following for a while. The title: ''Hunt is on for overseas college students'' (Marklein, 2011). Some things just upset me more than most. Usually they have to do with politics or ignorance, but this one puts a burr in my saddle because I am a college student and respiratory therapist, and I know ...