You can smoke, eat and drink and still be a good RT

I notice a lot of hospitals are going smoke free.  The idea is that hospital administrators believe medical professionals should be setting a positive example for the community.  This is fine.  I don't have a problem with it.

What I do have a problem with is hospitals not hiring working because they smoke.  I think what a person does on his own time is no one else's business.  However, hospitals do have a right to hire and fire at will so long as they don't violate race and sex codes.

On a similar note, some people say that respiratory therapists shouldn't smoke just because they are respiratory therapists.  I read one column recently where the columnists -- a young RT -- was shown by her preceptor a very effective means of encouraging patients how to quit smoking. 

Yet the columnist later saw that same preceptor smoking.  He smiled and said, "I never said it was easy to quit."  She wrote that this was hypocritical.  Here he was encouraging people to quit when he himself had a problem.  He should quit.

I disagree.  Say you have a baseball player who never hits over .100 his entire career.  Do you think that person will never make a good manager.  If that were the case Sparky Anderson and Jim Leyland never would have amounted to anything.

My point is that what you do in your life does not correlate to how good of a teacher you are.  You can lead a life of misery, you can smoke, you can eat terribly, you could be 500 pounds overweight, yet that doesn't effect your ability to teach.  In fact, it might make  you an even better teacher.

You can use yourself as an example of why it's important to quit, or never to start in the first place.

In the same way that many in the medical field have learned from the bad choices of patients who are obese and smoke and are now suffering the consequences of their bad habits, our own patients can learn from our experiences.

Just because you're an RT or an RN or a doctor doesn't mean you have to be perfect.  Just because you're an RT doesn't mean you have to eat a boring diet, do exercises you hate, and never smoke or drink anything fun.  This is America for God sake. 

Being responsible is a choice.  Being stupid is a choice too.  You are free to choose no matter if you are a teacher or not. 



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