The following is a guest post by our RRT friend Will Lessons.
Recently Obama received the Time Magazine "Man of the Year" award because he was, according to the magazine, "able to get the vote of the low information voters." Playing on this theme, I would like to nominate for next year's prize the low information doctor.
Low Information Doctors don't know squat about respiratory therapy; it means they are not informed about Ventolin and Ventolators and BiPAP and Mucomyst and Atrovent. Some low-information doctors don't care, to the extent that they care when they have a sick patient, but other than that, it's TMZ and the E! Entertainment channel. You know, uninformed is not low informed. Uninformed is not they don't care to be informed. The low informed doctor simply chooses to be informed about other things, like Claire Danes and what she did with Clinton after the Golden Globes. Or Kim Kardashian's baby with Kanye. I mean, they care more about that than they do the benefits of Ventolin or the truth about the hypoxic drive hoax.
Yes, you heard me right. The low information doctor who may be the best doctor in the world, and yet he has no clue about respiratory therapy. Respiratory therapy is beyond the scope of their knowledge, yet they excel at making up theories about how ventolin ails every irritating lung sound.
Thanks. Will
Thoughts?
Note: The views of Will are not necessarily those of Rick Frea.
2 comments:
Respiratory Therapy is a strange profession in that we often take our orders from people who know less about our field than we do. Doctors go through 4 years of college, 4 years of med school, 3-7 years of residency... but they have to know about gallbladders and kidneys and glandular issues and depression, among other things.
We get a fraction of the schooling and training, yet it is all about one subject and becomes more in depth on that subject. So we take orders that we know are wrong or not ideal, and we learn to take it with a smile. It's an interesting concept. Often, disagreeing with ICU nurses and ER nurses can get RTs in trouble.
It's no wonder that many RTs just stop learning and become doers rather than thinkers... what good is that knowledge if it you're just going to defer to someone else and do what you're told? What good is that knowledge if other RTs will just see you as a show off?
Duly noted. I think your comment here might become a post. I think it should be the topic of an discussion. It would be a good discussion to have over a beer.
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