Respiratory therapists provide health care for patients with abnormalities of the heart and lungs. Respiratory care includes basic care (oxygen, aerosol therapy, and chest physiotherapy), critical care (ventilator management and physiologic monitoring), cardiopulmonary diagnostics, home care, and pulmonary disease management and rehabilitation. Respiratory therapists treat a variety of patients, ranging from newborns and children to adults and the elderly. These patients may have asthma, emphysema, chronic obstructive lung disease, pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, infant respiratory distress syndrome, or conditions brought on by shock, trauma, or post-operative surgical complications. Respiratory therapists provide care in hospitals, clinical specialty areas such as labor and delivery, neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, pulmonary function laboratory, sleep laboratory, and adult intensive care units. They are also employed in education, management, research, and industry.
Areas of Work and Emerging Areas of Specialty
Respiratory therapists’ tasks are expanding into areas such as pulmonary rehabilitation, smoking cessation counseling, disease prevention, case management, and polysomnography—the diagnosis of breathing disorders during sleep, such as apnea. Respiratory therapists also participate in air and ground transportation of critically ill patients from one health care facility to the next.
Job Outlook
There is an expanding demand for Respiratory Therapists, due in part to aging Americans. Recent information published by the U.S.Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the job outlook for respiratory therapists will improve substantially in the next several years because of substantial growth in the numbers of the middle-aged and elderly population—a development that will heighten the incidence of cardiopulmonary disease—and because of the expanding role of respiratory therapists in the early detection of pulmonary disorders, case management, disease prevention, and emergency care.
Salary range
Median annual salary of respiratory therapists in the United States was $43,140 in May 2004, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,650 and $50,860. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $32,220, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $57,580.
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