Expectations vs Reality: Respiratory Therapy with Breathe Easy

📷 Breathe Easy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breatheeasy_rrt/?hl=en 📹 Breathe Easy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVT9j00IVH6yT4QTo_cdDw 📊 Blog Article: https://www.careerwatch.co/blog/respiratory-therapy-interview 🏫 Explore careers with Coursera Plus: https://bit.ly/3nMXEDW 🧑‍🚀 My blog and business are powered by Kajabi! 14 Day FREE trial: https://bit.ly/33qLV6n 💰 Get up to 4 FREE stocks with Webull when you open an account: https://bit.ly/2Vjj9A8 🐶 Get paid to play with Dogs and Cats: https://bit.ly/2JmsDYP 🛍️ Amazon Recommendations (Books, Gear, Etc.): https://www.amazon.com/shop/careerwatch 📒 FREE RIASEC Assessment: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RIASEC/ Stephen: Okay, I'm here with Amy Cardoso from Breathe Easy. She has both an Instagram account and a YouTube channel. Thanks for joining me today, Amy. What motivated you to become a respiratory therapist over other occupations? Amy: So...Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I always get really excited to talk about what I do. Not many people really know what a respiratory therapist is, so I tend to picture someone like, oh me, I'll tell you all about it. When I was looking around, I knew I wanted to do something in health care. I wasn't really interested in nursing, and I wasn't really interested in PT & OT. They're all great professions; honestly, you have to kind of find something that you. And so I did a lot of research, and I also remembered a specific incident that I had where I met the respiratory therapist. I remember seeing that work in a medical emergency and watching how calm they were. And I remember thinking that time…what that person says there is one of the common people in the room: what is it that they do? And so as I was researching, and eventually found respiratory therapy. I started researching the field more, but actually, I just fell in love with the idea of specializing in a specific body system rather than generalizing in the body as the whole. And here I am. Stephen: That's awesome. Was there a career counselor or someone in your life that kind of influenced your decision to go into it, or was it mostly just kind of your own research into it? Amy: It was primarily my research, and then I have many families in the medical field. I’m the only one, but I heard their perspective on other fields and then asked them about respiratory therapy. And I started looking into the field more. It was just a lot of research, understanding what the profession actually did. Stephen: Gotcha, gotcha. From what I've read, it basically requires an associates’ degree. There's a lot of respiratory therapy programs all across the country, basically a two-year program. I hear it's challenging. What school did you go to? And was it a positive experience? Was it pretty tough? Can you go into that? Amy: Sure, so there is a minimum requirement of an associate’s degree for respiratory therapists, same as nursing, there’s a minimum of two years not including prerequisites depending on the school you go to. And then we actually have a, not one board exam, but two board exams that we have to pass to become licensed and credentialed, whereas many other professions only have one. I personally went to PIMA Medical Institute in Las Vegas, and I like it. It was an excellent program, and I do recommend that most people do because, with any medical program, it has to be accredited by a state-wide inter-board, so there's...specifically the Commission on Accreditation for respiratory care called CoArc.com, and they'll actually keep statistics on board pass rate, and how many people enroll and drop out of programs on an annual basis. So it did I get or looking for a program, how well that program is doing to see if they have very high board pass rate to know they're probably doing something right. So for people who don't have many options in the area, or maybe they have five or six schools and can’t decide, I always tell people to go to CoArc to get an idea of how that school is teaching their students. Stephen: Gotcha, and I'm guessing. Well, this is a very hands-on occupation. This is not a program you can do online: I'm sure there's a lot of lab work. Generally, make sure the program is licensed and accredited by a board. Does it depend on the reputation of the program matter, or basically, you can go to pretty much any respiratory therapist program, and it's not like the law field where you have to go to the top 10 respiratory therapy programs to get one of the better jobs really. Just go graduate from one of these programs, and you'll have a job immediately.