When Fresh Turns to Frazzled: The Stack-Up That Burns Out an RT

You know that feeling when you come back from days off, rested and ready, only to have your first few shifts slowly grind you down?

Yeah, me too.

Right after my six-day break, I dove back into the chaos — running those critical, useful treatments that actually help patients breathe better. But then there’s the rest of it. The stuff that piles up and drains you.

Like spending two hours at a code in the ER where it’s painfully obvious the patient—maybe someone in their late 80s with end-stage COPD and stage 4 cancer—is already gone. But the family is at the bedside, and the team keeps working, because... well, family presence matters. I get that. But it’s emotionally exhausting.

Or getting called to place a Zio patch in the ER—something that’s not urgent but just “on the list.” Then, ding! — a new patient to see on the floor. But before that, I have to rush back to the ER for a treatment I know is ordered more for “mom satisfaction” than medical necessity.

The ER doc even told me, “In the past, I wouldn’t order treatments for a kid with a simple cold, but after one mom got mad and left a bad review, now I do it every time — just so moms think we’re doing something.”

Then, to add to the fun, your coworker is tied up with outpatients. So you’re on the inpatient side handling everything yourself. And when she’s stuck doing a PFT—which takes an hour—you get pinged for an outpatient EKG that just came in. Suddenly, you’re doing all the inpatient stuff and the outpatient stuff too.

You see, all of these little things—important or not—stack up.

We have patients who genuinely need us, and if that was all we did, maybe burnout would be just a faint worry.

But when the useless, the unnecessary, and the “just for show” get piled on top, it hits you hard — sometimes within hours, even fresh off days off.

So yeah, those upcoming ten days off? They look really, really good right now.

Note to self: This stacking of pointless tasks? It’s the fuel behind what I call respiratory therapy apathy syndrome. When you do too much useless stuff, you stop caring—not because you don’t want to, but because it’s a defense mechanism.

If you’re feeling this too, you’re not alone. And maybe it’s time we all started talking about the real stuff behind RT burnout.