Respiratory Therapist Experience

General care was the right place for me to start for clinicals. It taught me the basic techniques a respiratory therapist needs. When I first began clinicals, it was difficult for me to learn new techniques and procedures for respiratory therapies. I struggled to take them from a procedure learned in a book or on the Mayo Intranet and figure how to apply it when I was with a patient. We did have labs to help us get hands on experience with the therapies but I still didn’t feel confident when entering a patient’s room and doing a procedure for the first time.
A patient I was assigned to on general care was a middle-aged woman, diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. At this point in my clinicals, I knew what questions to ask with certain disease processes, but I was still uncomfortable with how to ask and leave it open ended so the patient could expand on the topic. We were going into the patient’s room for both manual CPT and vibratory percussion due to a pneumothorax. She was a pleasant patient who was awaiting our arrival to perform her CPT. This would be my first patient experience with me performing CPT on a cystic fibrosis patient.
told me to adjust her bed and I followed up the request with a question regarding where to level the bed at. My C.I. told me to ask that question to the patient and how comfortable they were being tipped head down. The patient told me what they could handle for incline and explained to me why they didn’t want to be tipped so far. After beginning my manual CPT, I asked my C.I. if it looked correct where I was performing it and how I was. My C.I., then again, told me to refer to my patient when wondering those questions. My patient gave me constructive feedback and explained why she liked it a certain way better. When I was performing and done with the CPT session, my patient was coughing often, letting me know I have helped her with secretions she was not able to cough up on her