Personal Narrative: A Career In Respiratory Therapy

I interned at Stanford Health Care ValleyCare. It was my first choice in choosing an internship that was relevant to my career path in respiratory therapy. Upon gaining entry, I attended the student orientation, turned in required documents for immunization, and received Basic Life Support (BLS) certification. My role and responsibilities were to assist my supervisor with his current project which was proposing a new equipment product for the respiratory therapy department. In the proposal of the new project, I was assigned to conduct research and find relevant information that pertained to its efficient use and how it would benefit the hospital. As for other duties, I made sure that the revision dates of the policy documents were revised and

For my internship, I chose this method to put myself in the position of a respiratory therapist to gain the understanding of their work ethic and patient care responsibilities. After every patient procedure, I reflected on the details on what happened at the worksite and composed notes in the weekly field observation journals. During the process of analyzing the work of respiratory therapists, I learned they often deal with patients who are currently smokers as well as those who were former smokers. I observed patients with a history of smoking who were middle-aged adults and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This gave me an interest in learning more about the effects of respiratory and pulmonary illnesses on the patient. I used CSUEB’s library database to find journal articles through the PubMed.gov website. The search terms I used to find my sources were; middle-aged adults and COPD, treatments for COPD, bronchodilator, oxygen therapy, and smoking cessation programs. I managed my references by using the literature table to organize and break down the information needed from the peer reviewed journal articles. I have gained an understanding on how to interpret the information used on the research paper. As for the coding grid, I learned how to separate my observations based on the interactions at the worksite. Furthermore, I became familiar on which