Just Fix Them, Please

It was another fast-paced day in the ICU.  Five trips to CT in between going to the OR, weaning several patients, extubating two, reintubating one, and tweaking ventilator settings all day long. 

One of the residents yelled to me from down the hall.  I didn't even know this newly minted physician knew me by name, "I need you down here for a second."  I headed down the hall, white coat flapping in my wake. 

"Dr. Smith, what can I do for you," I asked, already planning where I had to be next.

"This patient is breathing fast," he said, pointing his dog-eared ICU pocket guide haphazardly at a patient on a ventilator.  "I think we need to fix him," the resident declared, "but I'm not sure what's wrong."

One look at the patient on minimal pressure support, a stethoscope to the chest, an increase in pressure support, and the patient not only was breathing at a normal rate, but looked immeasurably more comfortable. 

With nothing more said, I was off to my next patient.  As I was walking by, the resident turned to the nurse and said, "that's what I like about Respiratory Therapists here: they just know how to fix the patients." 

How many times do we hear, "just fix them" from a nurse, resident, or doctor?  What better role could we have than to be the "fixers"?

What does that mean? It means, first and foremost, that we are trusted as a profession to manage patients on ventilators.  It is often the case that the sicker the patient, the more we're leaned upon.  How many healthcare professionals (including physicians) that you work with are nervous around oscillators, modes of ventilation, dyssynchrony?  They lean on us to do what is right, to indirectly make them look good! 

This has taken painstaking devotion by a tremendous number of Respiratory Therapists to get us there! I take that honor seriously in a neverending thirst for more knowledge, in a quest for perfection in clinical practice.  It's exactly what I would want from the Respiratory Therapist managing my care.