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JH's avatar
Jul 23Edited

As an Australian intensivist, I can’t see the need for respiratory therapists on the first place, let alone an Advanced Practice one (or any of the alphabet soup).

Your system makes no sense to me.

Our ICU nurses manage the ventilators just fine in Australia. No need for RT, let alone APRT.

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PulmCCM's avatar

This is super interesting. I find these cross-national differences to be little windows into what is essential and expose the flexibility on how necessary things get done. Thanks for writing.

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Chris's avatar

At least there is apparently a certification process involved for this. PAs and NPs in the ER can act independently with no apparent minimum requirements of training/experience whatsoever beyond what just what it takes to become an NP or a PA. And it seems to be only getting worse.

A big driver of this, in my opinion, is the increasing trend towards private equity staffing of ERs, ICUs and hospitalist positions. Their only concern is to do things as cheaply as they possibly can. They could not care less about how well the patients do, as long as they meet the BS minimum "metrics" that they are required to hit. And they have a lot more lobbying power than we do.

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PulmCCM's avatar

it’s a good point. Ironically I suspect the certification process and extra clinical training (and cost of education) are also major barriers to interest by rank and file RTs, and will also slow down the dissemination of the role.

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