Respiratory Therapists manage breathing and pulmonary care for patients across the hospital — running ventilators, performing breathing treatments, supporting codes, drawing arterial blood gases, helping patients recover lung function. The work tends to be acute, technical, and quietly central to critical care.
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.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Healthcare roles →Respiratory Therapists manage breathing and pulmonary care for patients across the hospital — running ventilators, performing breathing treatments, supporting codes, drawing arterial blood gases, helping patients recover lung function. The work tends to be acute, technical, and quietly central to critical care.
Median pay for a Respiratory Therapist (RT) is about $80K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $62K to $109K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Critical Thinking, Active Listening, Monitoring, Speaking, and Service Orientation.
Most people in this role hold a postsecondary certificate.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 12.1% through 2034, with roughly 136,420 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Staff Therapist, Oxygen Therapist, and Staff Respiratory Therapist.
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