RT Student Blog

Remember when I told you about my fellow blogging RT students in Sometimes I Breathe, Consciously Breathing, Free Speech, RT Scribe, and Trauma Junkie. Well thanks to the list (see previous post) I have discovered another one. It's the Sleep Deprived RT Student and much like myself, he's in the home stretch with one more semester to go. Now, I just have to figure out where he's located (hint hint)

Exciting news. I discovered that Rick over at Respiratory Therapy Cave posted his "Top 23 Respiratory Therapy Blogs of 2008" and more importantly he included a couple of student blogs. Including this one. I was pretty excited because he included me and a couple of my blogging friends. I know, I'm supposed to be talking about school and all but we are on break between semesters. Don't worry, I'll be back to school soon. But like my buddy the Trauma Junkie (who was also on the list, just a little higher), I'll tell you what was said.

"9. RT Student Blog: I
always say you can learn more from RT Students than seasoned doctors
mainly because students have all the up to date wisdom while seasoned
doctors still go by the wisdom of the day they graduated, which is
often wisdom that is antediluvian. This blogger puts a student spin on"
current RT wisdom."

My teacher just emailed me a link to a website that I thought you all might be interested in. It's called RT Space and is tagged as "A Global Community for Respiratory Therapists". I have only signed up and got a username and password. I haven't really explored a lot yet, but I will. Check it out, sign up and let me know if you find any cool stuff.

I just thought I'd post this. As you can see it's 31 degrees right now with a high of 40 today. The day after tomorrow the high will be 71. Definitely warrants a WTF? Oh, and just a note, the past week has been in the 60's.

...the semester is over. I got my report card in the mail (3 B's and 2 C's), I've paid my tuition for the very last time (445 bucks) and ordered my books on amazon (100 bucks but they're not here yet). Now I'm just biding my time until the semester starts January 12th.

Let me explain the structure of our program because I know all programs are different. First of we have 2 teachers, Mrs. H the program director, and Mrs. G the clinical director. The first semester, Fall #1, Mrs. H teaches us Intro to Respiratory. It's the only class the first semester. It introduces us to oxygen therapy, drugs, masks, and patient assessment. The second semester, Spring #1, we have 2 classes and 1 day of clinicals a week. The main class is taught by Mrs. G. It's the most important class if you ask me. Thats where we learn how to give breathing treatments, draw ABG's and all of the other procedures we'll need. We also take Cardiopulmonary Anatomy and Physiology taught by Mrs. H. You all basically know what that one is. For Clinicals we went to 3 hospitals this semester. The class still had about 12 people and the teachers accompanied us to these and taught us patient assessment and breathing treatments.

The 3rd semester, summer, is mainly critical care. This is when we learn Mechanical Ventilation and a variety of ventilators. In order, we learned the PB 7200, Servo 300, Servo i, and PB 840. Final checkoff was brutal because we had multiple scenarios on all of those vents and it took about 3 hours. We also took the Pathology course with Mrs. H this semester. We learned a lot about the diseases. We had one day of clinicals a week and went to a few more hospitals and even did a home health rotation. For the Pathology class we had to pick a clinical patient and do a case study on them. I'm pretty good at writing and made a 96 on the case study.

The 4th semester, Fall #2, is an exciting time. The most exciting part to me was the fact that we have freshmen that we are interacting with. It's a great feeling to be able to impart advice to students who are where I was a year ago. This semester we have 2 days of clinicals a week and it's mainly in ICU's dealing with ventilator patients. We also do our intubation rotation at an operating room. I got all 4 of the intubation checkoffs I need. We also have our neonatal and peds class taught by Mrs. G. We learn everything we need to about babies, deliveries (I went to 4), and neonatal ventilators. NICU is a big part of what we do and learning this stuff is important. We also took a class called Advanced Monitoring and Procedures taught by Mrs. H. It's basically about all of the various things that we hadn't covered before. We learned about things like sleep study (polysomnography), PFT, and cardiac drugs. We also took ACLS this semester. This class is also a review to prepare us for the CRT certification exam. We had a mock CRT for the final and I made a 105 (highest grade in the class).To step it up from the last semester we had to do 2 case studies (1 for each teacher). I made a 95 and 89 (I'm a good writer but Mrs. G is a really tough grader).

Now we are about to begin the final semester, Spring #2. From what I can tell we will have 3 days of clinicals; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Beyond that we have one class. It's taught by Mrs. H and is basically a preparation class for the RRT (the second certification exam). We also have to do some kind of community project. Most students just go to high school and talk to students about respiratory stuff. We also take PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) this semester. I don't know about any written case studies but we'll see.

As my buddy over at "Sometimes I Breathe" spoke about in his last post, I too am 4/5th of the way through my Respiratory Therapy program. Thats 4 semesters behind me and 1 semester to go. I have turned in my clinical checkoff book, finished my exams, and got the grade for both case studies. In my Advanced Monitoring course I got a 100 on the exam, 95 on the case study, and 88 in the class. In my Neonatal/Pediatrics class I got an 82 on the exam, 89 on the case study, and 80 in the class. Both classes were very hard but the teacher from the Neonatal course is a bit tougher in her grading. I am definitely going to be a better RT thanks to her and she's even in my facebook friends.
I have been working quite a bit as a Respiratory Assistant at the local hospital. As a matter of fact today is my first day since Thanksgiving with no school or work. I am absolutely doing nothing today. I have even purchased the 2 books I need on Amazon with my coinstar change. Here are the books too.




Now that the semester is over I can take it easy for a few weeks at least. So I'll wish a Happy Holidays to my fellow blogging RT students in Georgia, California, Texas, Canada, and another one that is in Texas. Go check out their blogs and tell them I sent you.

I don't know about you but I have finals next week and I'm not really excited about them. One of them is a 140-160 question practice CRT exam. To prepare for it we have been taking various practice tests every day for the past 2 weeks. My classmates and I are all in the same boat at the 60%-70% range for our grades. Anyway, I was searching online and found a free practice CRT exam at the NBRC's website. I started to take it but then decided it was too late in the evening to begin a 140 question test. I'll take it tomorrow night (maybe) and definitely a couple of times in the next week. If you want to take it and post your scores in the comments that would be great.