Respiratory Therapist (RT)

Most shifts flow on the unit needs and the alert pager — assessing patients, running scheduled and emergent breathing treatments, managing ventilators in the ICU, drawing ABGs, supporting intubations and codes, transporting ventilated patients, and documenting through the EMR. You're often working in hospitals across ICUs, ED, neonatal, and floors, and the unit mix — adult ICU, NICU, pulmonary, ED — shapes the day.

What tends to be harder than people expect is the acute weight of the work combined with shift demands. Codes, end-of-life conversations, and patients you sit with through respiratory failure are part of the job, and 12-hour shifts and weekend rotations are standard. Burnout, COVID-era trauma, and short staffing have reshaped the field. NICU, ECMO, and PFT specialty paths add depth.

People who tend to thrive here are calm in critical moments, comfortable with ventilator physics, technically sharp, and emotionally durable. If you want outpatient quiet, RT lives mostly in acute care. If you find deep meaning in being the breath specialist on the team when a patient is fighting to breathe, the role offers durable demand, strong pay, and meaningful clinical responsibility.