As my time as an RT comes to a close (one more shift) I wanted to share some things I won’t miss about being an RT. In no particular order.

• Inaccurate procedure Counts.

In the RT world its all about numbers. According tonnage meant we should be able to do a minimum of 35 procedures a day. If you are covering the ICU you will do far more than that. But, I digress.

Each nebulizer is considered a procedure. If the patient receives more than one medication and if that medication cannot be mixed with another it supposed to be considered another procedure. For example: albuterol and atrovent can be mixed. Pulmicort, brovana, and performing should not be mixed with anything else, nor each other. So each non-mixable med should be counted as a procedure.

A bipap is considered 6 procedures because it has to be checked, at minimum, every two hours. An RT, worth anything is usually in there more. The same goes for vents- 6 procedures.

So I won’t miss the inaccurate counts by night shift.

• being told how to do my job by other disciplines, ie nursing. I have been managing, Ventilators and listening to lungs for 12 years. I know what I’m doing. RT is a highly specialized profession. Now, I will be the nurse but I will try my best not to tell someone how to do their job.

• docs making changes and not writing orders to back those changes up, leaving me in a bind. This goes with docs making changes, not telling us and the patient crumping as a result. (and getting the blame. That has never happened to me but to a friend)

• being the only RT in a 26 bed ER with 7 fast track beds and 4 pediatric beds, with 3-4 physicians and three PA’s writing orders for RT. I won’t miss not being able to be in 3 places at once and I won’t miss not being able to do things fast enough for anyone. I also won’t miss having to wait until every other discipline is done with what they are doing to do with the patient. (which has always annoyed me). I won’t miss the Crackberry ER pager either. I hear that shit in my sleep. I will also not miss fighting with nurses for computer time. This goes with the waiting for the other disciplines thing.

• I will not miss following others to only have to pick up the slack for them. (I know this will happen in nursing too) It’ s particularly annoying because the night shift seems to think that because we have more people on that we have more time to do things they don’t do. Um, no. Dead wrong. We have docs coming in and out writing new orders, families, meal trays, etc. So we may have more people on but we do more work. For real.

This is not to say that RT was all bad. Please look for Top Five Things I WILL miss about RT.

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I also will not miss being called “Hey respiratory” instead of by my name.