Brooks Rehabilitation Respiratory Therapy Team: Fun Facts

Did you know your Brooks Respiratory Therapy Team has more than 125 years of combined experience?

Check out some of these fun facts about our Brooks Respiratory Therapy Team. As Respiratory Therapists:

• Our patients range from 21 weeks gestation to older than one hundred years.
• We treat and manage over 50 different disease processes (more if you count symptomatic management of other co-morbidities).
• We are the ones you want when your loved one is wheezing, has dropping oxygen saturation levels, or stops breathing at all.
• We are the ones who help everyone understand how a person’s breathing effects absolutely every other part of their care.
• We work with at least 10 different pieces of equipment at any given moment.
• We get called “Nurse” at least once a shift (and in every news story about Coronavirus), but that’s ok with us because we work alongside some of the most amazing nurses!
• We chose this career to save people and to make a difference and we’re glad we did! After all… if you can’t breathe you can’t do anything else.

What do respiratory therapists do?

• Draw and analyze blood
• Set up, change, troubleshoot, break down and clean equipment
• Assess and re-asses patients
• Clean, change and troubleshoot tracheostomy
• Set up, monitor and educate on the importance of bilevel positive airway pressure machines (BiPAPs) and continuous positive airway pressure machines (CPAPs)
• Manage and wean ventilators
• Wean diaphragmatic pacers
• Perform sleep studies
• Perform pulmonary function tests
• Initiate Oxygen, manage hi-flow Oxygen and wean Oxygen
• Maintain supplies
• Help avoid hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs)
• Provide oral care
• Cap tracheostomy patients and put tracheostomy patients on PMV
• Educate patients and caregivers
• Fight aspiration risks
• Respond to codes and rapid response
• And, of course, we do treatments

Now, more than ever, this role is critical in achieving successful patient outcomes!

This week is Respiratory Care Week. Remember to thank your Respiratory Therapy Team!