R-E-S-P-E-C-(r)T

Healthcare has a pretty well-known problem with workplace respect. The issue has been covered and will be covered by people much more insightful than I, but a subset of that issue that routinely bubbles up in my various social feeds, and it's an interesting question.

I'm a respiratory therapist. We're a relatively young, relatively unknown allied health discipline with roots in the early days of post-operative oxygen therapy, as well as the infamous polio epidemic of the 1950s. (Would you like to know more?) We've grown from our humble roots as on-the-job-trained technicians with basically one job to multifaceted roles within the hospital (and increasingly without). However, despite that exciting growth and development, we remain relatively unknown.

Some of that is our own fault, to be sure. We've had our share of mis-steps and missed opportunities. But at the end of the day, it's our reality, and it leads to a lot of consternation about whether we're "respected" or not. If not, why not, and how do we grow that respect?

The problem is, based on the commentary I see, we're not even defining respect consistently. Many people state that respect is earned at the patient's side, with individual skill and integrity and such. This is absolutely true, but I'm not convinced that's what people are really looking for. Unless you're a real jerk, I would argue that while there are certainly exceptions, most RTs are individually respected by their peers in other disciplines. However, that's not very true when it comes to what you might call the "population" level. Since relatively few administrators, policymakers, or general public folks know what we contribute, the default is some of the most visible, basic stuff. That's where the "Oh, you just give the breathing treatments," or the "You had to go to school for that???" comes from.

We're also not even at the point of respecting ourselves. "Eating the young" is again a sadly widespread tradition in healthcare, but we tend to double-down on that. We also tend to go for seconds with our external colleagues; nurse sets up an oxygen cannula wrong? That's a mocking. Resident physician writes a weird order for an inhaler? That's a mocking. New RT has a crazy idea to use evidence-based therapy instead of just going along with what the physician writes? That's too much work; just do it as written and move on. Many of us don't see the need to strive to new frontiers or to boldly go anywhere. Rather, we're content with our associates degrees and The Way We've Always Done It, and to wonder when our respect will be arriving like it's something we order from Amazon.

Yes, it's hard to fight inertia. Yes, there are times where everyone thinks about surrendering to the current (including myself). But doesn't respect start at home? Doesn't respect come from being understood? How do we break this cycle of complacency and frustration and come together to tell the world who we are and what we do? It it a campaign? The sum of those individual patientside efforts? Or do we continue to go it alone and hope for the best?