MORGANTOWN – WVU Medicine celebrated Respiratory Therapist Week last week.
The COVID pandemic has brought respiratory therapists more to the forefront of many people’s minds with daily talk of ventilators and ICUs for COVID patients. And its naturally posed increased challenges for the therapists themselves, as for all other health care workers, said Brad Foringer, director of respiratory care at Ruby Memorial Hospital.
“The great thing about respiratory therapists is we are a family, so we help each other,” he said.
This year’s theme is three words, he said: strength, resilience and hope. “When you think about where we’re at in the pandemic for the past 18 months, those three words are really important.”
The staff has the strength to support each other, the resilience to come back every day, and “hope that one day we’ll be out of this. Plus it’s the hope that they give the patients and they give the families that we’ll get through this.”
For Respiratory Therapy Week, he said, there’s been different food for the staff each day, companies have donated prizes to raffle; they’ve had giveaways, a zipper jacket with their name on the sleeve this year; and shared stories.
Foringer oversees a staff of 150, he said – 28-30 during the day, 26-28 during the night. They work with every age group from neonatal to geriatric, and every floor of the hospital; they also ride along with patients in ambulances and helicopters.
The Dominion Post met with Foringer and two of his staff – Sean McCahill and Ashlee Schneider – on Friday to learn a bit about what they do.
McCahill is a registered respiratory therapist and charge therapist. He was just halfway through his shift when we met at noon Friday and had already walked more than four miles,covering every floor of Ruby.
He roams to floors, he said, to make sure the therapists have what they need, that every unit has the equipment it needs, help therapists who need a hand. “Just walking around, making sure everything’s good here, everybody has what they need to do their properly throughout the day.”
Schneider said she does new employee orientation, helps the therapists on staff, attends meetings, does paperwork and some occasional bedside work besides.
It’s a therapist’s job to help patients breathe, regain their strength, recuperate and go home, they said. It might be as basic as overseeing a post-op patient with an incentive spirometer – those clear blue plastic things you suck on to to make the blue floater rise, to keep your lungs exercised – to assisting a physician with an intubation for a respirator patient.
The goal, whenever possible, Foringer said, is to try to keep patients from being intubated. “We do everything in our toolbox to try to keep them from going that direction. … Its that teamwork, with the respiratory therapist, with the RN, with the physician, to really come up with a game plan on how do we manage this patient, how do we manage them appropriately” to keep them from the ICU or from being in the hospital multiple weeks. “The RT is really an integral part of that team.”
There have been two training paths to becoming a respiratory therapist, Foringer said, via associate degree programs and bachelor degree programs. Now, all new programs have to be at the bachelor level.
“We’re continuing to push the profession to having more advanced degrees. Most therapists have associate degrees and go back for a bachelor’s. Now there are some master’s programs.
They’re working with WVU, he said, to create a bachelor-level program there. “The problem we’re having in today’s world is there’s just not enough respiratory therapists.”
The shortage was there pre-COVID, he said, but COVID amplified it. “It is more challenging now with the supply and demand issue.”
For most respiratory therapists, they said, this is a career choice, not just a job.
McCahill has been on staff 3 ½ years, he said. Schneider graduated from Fairmont State in 2013,
worked at Stonewall Jackson for a couple years, did home health for a year, then came to Ruby in 2017.
Foringer has been aboard for 25 years and has worked in every facet of the department, he said, from staff therapist to clinical specialist to manager and now director. The average tenure is 12 years
“Usually this is the place you retire from,” he said. Working with the wide array of patients keeps the job stimulating. “There isn’t a day that goes by you don’t learn something new.”
And working at a university teaching hospital offers special advantages, he said. “That’s how I recruit, that’s how I get people in.” He brings in fresh graduates and lets them grow.
Tweet David Beard @dbeardtdp Email dbeard@dominionpost.com
