Director of Respiratory Therapy at Lee Health

On December 31, 2019, an unknown illness started to spread and infect the population in Wuhan, China. After this day, the rate of infection steadily increased and spread to other places in the world. I remember the day clearly when the pandemic finally made America push the panic button; it was March 13, 2020. I was a manager of respiratory therapy, sleep medicine, pulmonary lab, and EEG. As I was leaving for the day, the hospital I was working for locked all entrances and set up screening stations at every entry point.   A few months earlier, I had accepted a new position in another state as a director of respiratory, sleep medicine, pulmonary lab, and EEG for a large level-one trauma center. I had never moved across the country before this. I felt like it was a cruel joke that this was happening at the very same time. My house was up for sale, and I needed to find a place to live in a new city. At the same time, COVID-19 became a scary and harsh reality here in America. 

Walking into a new position as the leader of respiratory therapy, who was at the very forefront of caring for these COVID-19 patients, really became a very frightening reality for me. What had I done? I was uprooting my life amid utter chaos in the world. No one knew then how this pandemic would turn out. My new team was very brave and strong; it was like they were soldiers on a battlefield. They were not deterred by the sheer magnitude of this unknown illness; they were determined to care for these patients. Each day, the respiratory therapists would place their N95 masks on protective eyewear and tie back their hair in hats. It was so hard to recognize any of this new team with all this gear on. I was a new, unknown leader who was supposed to lead this team through this. How would I do this?

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s time moved on, the pandemic began to slow a little. Respiratory therapy was being discussed in the media for the first time that I could remember. Our profession has always been unknown to people outside of healthcare. We were being described as ‘Nurses for the lungs.’  I will tell you that many respiratory therapists took offense to this. Our profession was now in very high demand. Many of my team members quit and took traveling jobs that paid astronomic wages and incentives. My remaining team was chronically short-staffed and overworked. My team was growing tired and stressed. We now had to pay astronomic wages to get contract labor to assist in staff shortages. How ironic is this? 

Little did we know this was the beginning of a serious healthcare crisis. Many healthcare workers have left their careers. The ones that remained were in hot pursuit of higher wages. The ones who stayed and fought the battle through all the ups and downs of the pandemic were bitter towards their team members who left them on the battlefield. 

We now must face the future of healthcare worker shortages that are worse than before the pandemic. This is not an easy issue to solve. Healthcare is evolving faster than ever to include more efficient ways to care for patients, and the use of technology is more important than ever. Technology must be at the forefront to help solve the chronic shortage of nurses, physicians, and therapists. We have entered a new era of healthcare around the world. The crisis of the pandemic is not over. It has changed our economy, as well as changed population mindsets. The world has changed and continues to evolve. Society has shown how resilient it can be. Healthcare must be resilient through this ever-changing landscape of increased costs, shortage in staffing, the goal of improving population health and the overall gross domestic product (GDP).