Help me choose!! Respiratory or RN?

sunnycalifRN · Jun 13, 2011

I was an RRT for 10 years before switching to RN, so you know my bias. It is true that RRT's make less than RN. I would say go for the RN but there's nothing wrong with RRT.

As I made a change from RRT to RN after 10 yrs, there's nothing stopping you from making a change, if you find that you really want a change from the career you chose.

greenfiremajick · Jun 13, 2011

"But the kind of interaction you will have as a nurse will be very different from what you have as a respiratory therapist. Think about that."

Would you pls elaborate upon this??

I don't think we're going to know enough about you to advise =/
Choosing a "satisfying" job, especially one that can be as tough AND rewarding as nursing, is a very personal decision which for many people becomes a spiritual issue. It would be the answer to this question: what is it that your heart really drives you to do when you wake up in the morning?
You seem to be looking for practical advice about whether the job is good enough to put up will all the garbage that nurses have to cope with. The truth is that's extremely subjective. Someone close to you could probably evaluate better based on your personality, but it still has to be your decision.
If you wish to "help people," to try and help them get better from their illnesses, and are interested in health care, nursing and respiratory therapy are both career choices that satisfy those goals. But the kind of interaction you will have as a nurse will be very different from what you have as a respiratory therapist. Think about that. If you don't know about it, you may want to read something in-depth about each type of interaction.

futureRN_Anastasia · Jun 13, 2011

Thanks for everyone's replies. :heartbeat This has been SUCH a hard choice. If anyone has any more advice, i'm open to it. As for my personality, I am very caring and enjoy patient care, but I also enjoy the technology part of healthcare. I would enjoy the responsibility of responding to codes, putting the sickest NICU babies on vents, etc. If I lived in a larger town (i live in a very small town, with a mid-sized town 30 min away), I would say nursing b/c I would have the opportunity to work an an RN in the NICU, ICU, etc. However, the NICU in the mid sized town is very small, and ICU also very small. No PICU's, etc. So, the nurses i've talked to say that my first job would be med-surg, or LTC. I have no problem with the death aspect of it, both my children have been critically ill at one point, and I feel that I can seperate myself from my emotions and do my job, and I handle stressful situations well. I m truly 50/50 on this, and it's killing me. I also feel bad b/c there is a HUGE waiting list to get into both programs, and almost 300 applied to each and only 40 got in to each. So, I know I need to make a choice ASAP so they will still have time to let an alternate in. It may even be too late for that, since orientation is over. Hopefully not. I know that either choice will be a good choice. Thanks again to everyone who replied.

Life is long, and you might eventually decide to live in a city or a different town. I like the idea of RN more than RT, because you have so many choices. If you get bored in one specialty, you have tons of others, without a career change.

Good luck with whatever choice you make!!!

applewhitern, BSN, RN · Jun 13, 2011

From my experience, the RN does most of the same things the respiratory therapist would do. Everywhere I have worked, the nurses suction trachs and ETT's, give breathing treatments, etc. The only thing we don't do is set up a vent. I have also worked where we (the RN) would assist with bedside bronchs, etc. Where I work right now, we only have one resp. therapist at any given time thru-out the whole hospital.

Guest 360983 · Jun 14, 2011

Both of my parents are RTs. My mom really loves it. She especially likes avoiding vomit and poop (for the most part) and she has no problem suctioning out trachs (those gross me out). For the past few years she's done a lot of precepting with RT students, which is the first time in 30 years that she's done something other than her "regular" RT job. I don't know what her salary is, but she supported the whole family on her paycheck for several years in my childhood.

Some basic differences between RTs and RNs--an RN has the same patients all day long. An RT might visit the same patient a few times but is going to have a bunch of different patients to take care of, and is only going to spend a few minutes with each one. An RT's only responsibility is breathing. An RN takes care of every part of the patient's body and also (ideally) does patient teaching and works with the patient's family. An RT has very few job options. An RN has a ton of job options from different specialties to different settings to several advanced practice options.

nicu4me · Jun 14, 2011

U talked about wanting to be a NICU/PICU nurse, and wanting to put those sickest kids on the vents? We are a level 3 NICU. The RT's DONT touch our babies. They drag the equipment to the bedside and do checks on it and change out circuits. So putting the sickest baby on the vent? Well you as the RT drags the HFOV or the vent or BCPAP to the bedside and off YOU go as I connect and I dial in the settings. The NNP or the MD and I intubate the baby, suction, etc. Yes, the RT on transport gets to go out by air/ground, but that's only for respiratory needs so that they can help with the equipment. Most of the time I don't trust the RT's because the will walk by a baby alarming with sat's in the teens while I have my arms in another isolette. I have also worked adults, you get to the floor and start a neb treatment. So what? What I think is that if you want any type of interaction with patients/families/coworkers is that you become and RN. You will draw your own gasses, know what they mean, and interact with the MD. RT's they get the order in the computer to come to the bedside and start a neb or set up a vent. That's it. So this depends upon how much u would be bored in an RT job. NO advancement NO changing specialities and stuck doing the same thing all the time. Not for me and prob as many times it does suck being the RN responsible for everything all the time, I have the control and I have the role as the advocate to the patient. Do you think the MD or NNP is going to ask the RT what the lungs sound like or how they responded to a particular treatment? Don't go to RT school if it only because it's cheaper, shorter, etc. you will regret following your need to connect to another on a much deeper level than "here's your neb tx". Good luck to you!

IndecisiveInMiami · Jul 16, 2011

Amy-- I am currently having this exact same problem!! Did you choose???

Both sides are still tearing me down the middle. What about these questions.....

Do both work the same type of schedule with the same type of hours?

Is finding a job after graduation the same for both or are their more opportunities for one over the other??

Do they both deal with "backstabbing" and BS from their own co-workers? That's something I would really hate.

ssrhythm · Jul 21, 2011

Hello. I'm an SRNA, RN, RRT, and soon to be...God willing...CRNA! First question you need to ask yourself: What do I want to be doing in ten or fifteen years? If it is bedside RN care or RRT care, then I'd choose the RRT route. I found that the training was much more in-depth and specialized, and the RRT program prepared me to be much more of a medically minded provider. As far as money goes, you will hear a lot of different info. My last job as an RRT, I worked PRN nights as my wife's job provided our insurance. I worked every M,T,W / M,T,W,Th 12 hour nights and with six years experience starting the job, I pulled in 66K with that schedule. Had I wanted to pull more OT or more weekend shifts, I could have made a good bit more. You just have to find the right place, be competent, and have a good employment record. I much preferred the ability to work multiple floors or units and move about the hospital at night. One night I'd be in ED/Trauma, the next I'd be in CVICU etc. Really cool job. Know this, however. You will always be looked down upon by most RNs. Most of the worst don't know their orifice from a hole in the ground and have ZERO assessment skills, but be prepared to deal with the "I'm and RN and you work under me" mentality. Smart nurses who have a clue will treat you as thier peer. Hate to even have to mention that, but it is reality.

If you have any desire whatsoever for possible upward mobility...any at all...choose nursing. Get your BSN and make great grades while doing so (take care of your GPA no matter what you choose to do). Realize that you will not be a great nurse when you get out of school, and go to work to do a great job and become a great nurse. Learn, work hard, be professional, and keep a good work record.

If you do that, you can either keep being a great RN or you can choose many paths for upward mobility such as management, DNP, or CRNA.

Whatever you choose, please take the time to think about what you might want to be doing as you approach retirement. I went for RRT because it was the quickest healthcare degree program I could get into, and I wanted to finish school before I married my fiancee. Three years into it, I knew that I would not be satisfied until I was a CRNA. Thirteen years, a BSN, two years critical care nursing experience and two years of CRNA school later, I'm almost there. I don't regret anything, but it would have been a LOT easier and cheaper to have done a little more research up front.

Whatever you choose, good luck. You really can not go wrong, as any patient care position will be very rewarding. Keep us posted.

rrtDude · Sep 26, 2011

U talked about wanting to be a NICU/PICU nurse, and wanting to put those sickest kids on the vents? We are a level 3 NICU. The RT's DONT touch our babies. They drag the equipment to the bedside and do checks on it and change out circuits. So putting the sickest baby on the vent? Well you as the RT drags the HFOV or the vent or BCPAP to the bedside and off YOU go as I connect and I dial in the settings. The NNP or the MD and I intubate the baby, suction, etc. Yes, the RT on transport gets to go out by air/ground, but that's only for respiratory needs so that they can help with the equipment. Most of the time I don't trust the RT's because the will walk by a baby alarming with sat's in the teens while I have my arms in another isolette. I have also worked adults, you get to the floor and start a neb treatment. So what? What I think is that if you want any type of interaction with patients/families/coworkers is that you become and RN. You will draw your own gasses, know what they mean, and interact with the MD. RT's they get the order in the computer to come to the bedside and start a neb or set up a vent. That's it. So this depends upon how much u would be bored in an RT job. NO advancement NO changing specialities and stuck doing the same thing all the time. Not for me and prob as many times it does suck being the RN responsible for everything all the time, I have the control and I have the role as the advocate to the patient. Do you think the MD or NNP is going to ask the RT what the lungs sound like or how they responded to a particular treatment? Don't go to RT school if it only because it's cheaper, shorter, etc. you will regret following your need to connect to another on a much deeper level than "here's your neb tx". Good luck to you!

I am an RRT and I'd like to address a few things that you said here. First of all, let me just say that it is unfortunate that interacting with the respiratory staff has not been a positive experience for you. If an RT walked by the vent while it was alarming and did nothing about it, then in a way I can understand why you seem to lack trust in my colleagues' abilities. However, it is also unfair that you seem to paint the entire profession as incompetent just because of a few inadequately trained RCP's that show up on your floor dragging in vents for "your" babies. I don't know what hospital you work in but just to be clear, the level of responsibility that RT's take on in the NICU vary from hospital to hospital. I have worked in a Level 3 trauma center with a large NICU and we had RT's assigned to that floor permanently. They DID, and DO touch the babies, and they also perform intubations, vent set ups and dial in the settings. They don't just drag the equipment in for the nurses to handle as they work with them every day and night. So in short, just because your floor doesn't seem to include the respiratory staff in the care of neonates, it doesn't mean that it's the same for every single NICU in the country. If the OP wants to be an RT and work in NICU, then he/she should first research the hospitals that provide respiratory with this kind of specialized training and where there is an opportunity for RT's to be permanently assigned to that unit if they so choose to. I personally did not want to be in NICU all day although I could've, and god bless those nurses that did it but I'd rather roam around the hospital rather then being stuck working on one floor (not that you think of it as being stuck, but I did).

Second, as I already mentioned, I can understand your frustration about the whole vent alarm thing. I would, however, hope that you'd understand my frustration when I ask the nurse to put my patient on 3L nasal cannula as I get called into the ER for a stat call, just to get back a few minutes later to find my patient desatting on 3L OF AIR and with the prongs turned the WRONG way (simple things tho, right?). Those damn nurses, how dare they touch my patients, they just drag the nasal cannula in with the bubble humidifier for me maybe but IT'S ME, the RT, that hooks it up and dials in the setting on the flow meter. Most of the time I don't even trust them now.

But no seriously, is this the way I'm supposed to think now? That all nurses are incompetent when doing their jobs? Some of my best friends are nurses and some of them, especially the ones that work in the adult ICU, are excellent when it comes to ventilator management, weaning, drawing ABGs, you name it. Some are even better than the RT's I've worked with but you know what, I don't care, it is the fault of those RT's that didn't do what they needed to do to get on that same level. There are really, really great RT's, and there are also RT's that I wouldn't trust with a flow meter. And there are really, really great nurses, but there are also those that still make me scratch my head trying to figure out how they've made it through nursing school. I could go on and on typing up some of the things that nurses have done trying to perform some of the respiratory duties, such as a notoriously simple task of giving a neb treatment, but what is the point? The bottom line is, it is the individual that matters along with their clinical skill and experience, not the two or three letters behind their name. The credentials only allow you to practice nursing / respiratory but it says nothing about how good you really are when you actually do it. And I'd think for anyone intelligent enough to get through all the schooling and the examinations to earn the title of an RN or RT, that it'd be very simple to understand that we're all humans, and that there are good and bad RNs and RTs, and one, or a couple, or even the whole department, does not represent everyone in the profession. I don't even know how many Registered RT's we have in the country but I guarantee you that not every single one of them has been to YOUR NICU floor "dragging in" the vent.

To the OP, whether you become just a neb jockey as nicu4me called it will depend entirely on you and the hospital which you work in. It will be up to you to research a potential work place and how involved the RT's are in the NICU setting but it will also be up to you to decide what kind of RT you become. If you're good and you show to know your stuff, you will build strong rapport with the physicians and other nurses and you will be an important part of the health care team. But if you do nothing to further your knowledge or skill, then you will become exactly what nicu4me described, and you'll just run the nebs and push buttons on the vent so that you can go and watch TV in your office when you're done, with no one to care for you or your opinion. But that's all up to you. I am personally in great communication with the doctors and many times they let me make decisions that under normal circumstances I should not make because of the scope of my practice. But that's the relationship that I've built with the entire staff by not being cocky and always trying to learn more whether it be from a physician, a fellow RT, or even some experienced critical care nurse. I believe I'm very good at what I do but I never feel like I know everything nor do I act like it and that is also what makes my work colleagues respect me.

I love my job and I am never bored when I come to work, I'm always in different parts of the hospital doing different things. Anytime something goes down you hear RESPIRATORY STAT over the intercom and it's a great adrenaline rush because you get in there and you start bagging, intubating, and securing the airway, then bringing the vent in and setting everything up and putting the settings in. It's very rewarding when you save a patient's life and you really do feel like you're a part of the team. Specialties do exist within the respiratory field so yes you can branch out, although not as much as nursing. We have pulmonary function testing, sleep lab, pulmonary rehabilitation, and also the flight team where you're on the helicopter or fixed wing aircraft transporting patients. I AM my patient's advocate as we all should be, and if you'd like I'll give you some examples of the many times I would get on the phone with a doctor and asked for an order to be put in for a particular treatment, and it was done right there over the phone. I always connect with my patients and I do not agree with what nicu4me said. I don't simply go into a room and say "here, there's your neb" and bust out. As an RT, I spend a lot of time with my patients chatting it up about whatever they want to talk about, like about a Philly game or the weather outside. I doubt you can do that with the neonates but if you do manage to get one to talk to you and make a connection "on a deeper level" then kudos to you, because I was never able to :smokin: I have a great relationship with my patients and their families too, and some I still keep in touch with. If there is anything that I notice regarding my patients' care that needs the attention of either their doctor or their nurse, then I speak up.

Now, in closing, respiratory school is the same length as nursing school unless you go for the BSN. The tuition for nursing and respiratory is the same if you're choosing between the two programs at the same school. I can tell you being an RN is generally better if you plan to branch out a little bit, because then you can do just about anything. You can work in the ER, Oncology, Medsurg, Peds, etc. Respiratory is more specialized in that we're trained more in providing critical care so we're always in the ER or the ICU giving breathing treatments, drawing and analyzing arterial blood gases, intubating, suctioning, weaning, extubating, etc. We're also on the general floor performing assessments and providing treatments such as aerosol, chest PT, BiPAP, CPAP, things like that (we do all that in the ER and ICU too, or wherever we're called). Our focus is mainly on the cardiopulmonary system which we study for 2 years, as opposed to the nurses who study a little bit about all the body systems but are not as specialized in the cardiopulmonary system as we are (unless they're the ICU nurses, some are really good and know their respiratory stuff too). The best thing you can do is to shadow both an RN and an RT, and do it a couple times with different people so that you don't get stuck with a miserable nurse or a miserable respiratory therapist and think geez, these people must really hate their jobs If you think you'd be happy being a nurse then go be a nurse, but personally I wouldn't be a nurse if you paid me $10 extra per hour just because my heart is not in it. Nursing is a great profession, but it's just not for me. I believe you have to be born to be a good nurse, just like you have to be born to be a good respiratory therapist. I can tell you that I am the latter and there is no point of trying to change that fact. You have to figure out which one is you and no one on this forum will do it for you but you.

Best of luck! (sorry for the long post :))

IndecisiveInMiami · Sep 26, 2011

loving these posts!

pwickson · Apr 14, 2014

Hello

I became an RT 23 years ago and have never been disappointed or looked back since. As well I have managed an ICU as well as now leading the Critical Care Strategic Clinical Network in Alberta. Both are great professions and both jobs are very rewarding as the above person stated I too went into the profession as I love helping people, the healthcare field, different jobs, and I have been very successful.

From the above posts and working in the US is much different role than in Canada. I have worked in many different areas including NICU, PICU, CVICU, ICU, medical/surgical wards, pulmonary function testing, cardiac testing, asthma educator, COPD rehab coordinator, tracheostomy clinic coordinator, transport team, ECMO, and many other areas. My role has included the same autonomy and practice as nursing. I thought I wanted to be a paramedic and Respiratory Therapy was very similar. The role can be very diversified and very challenging and rewarding.

Good luck!

chillnurse, BSN, RN, NP · Apr 14, 2014

id do rn. no advancement for RT. i mean none. I did see a masters of RT degree online. It sort of made me laugh. I mean... basically all they do is bag people, set up vents, do ABGS, breathing treatments, and put people on C/Bipaps. Not dissing the profession, but there is no ability to progress (from the multiple hospitals i have worked at. I still don't understand the point of the masters program though.

Of course this is just at the hospitals I have worked at. Some places they get to intubate and do a lot more. which they really should be able to since I have heard their curriculum is pretty difficult.

Hopefully this will change for them, since I really do think they should be able to intubate, it would greatly help everybody out.