Respiratory Therapists

Individuals who evaluate, treat and care for patients with breathing or other cardiopulmonary disorders including premature infants whose lungs are not fully developed, elderly people whose lungs are diseased, patients with chronic asthma or emphysema and patients who are victims of a heart attack, stroke, drowning or shock. Respiratory therapists, practicing under physician direction, evaluate patients and provide treatments which may include the use of oxygen or oxygen mixtures, chest physiotherapy and aerosol medications. When a patient has difficulty getting enough oxygen into their blood, therapists increase the patient's concentration of oxygen by placing an oxygen mask or nasal cannula on the patient and set the oxygen flow at the level prescribed by a physician. Therapists may also connect patients who cannot breathe on their own to ventilators that deliver pressurized oxygen into the lungs.