Hospitals snap up respiratory therapists

Essential to the smooth running of many health interventions, respiratory therapists are becoming increasingly rare.

This is particularly the case in the Maisonneuve-Rosemont and Santa Cabrini hospitals, in Montreal, where around thirty more, or a third of the workforce, are needed.

Respiratory therapists must be everywhere in the hospital to take care of premature infants to people who have respiratory problems.

“He is the one who will have the respiratory function tests done, which will allow us to demystify a little the causes of a patient’s breathlessness, also at the level of the sleep laboratory to make a diagnosis of sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea,” explains pulmonologist at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Dr. Karine Chagnon.

In the health network as a whole, there is a shortage of approximately 300 respiratory therapists, according to their professional order.

To maintain the services, it would be necessary to hire 185 per year over the next five years, while only 120 must start working this year, after completing their three-year training at CEGEP.

It is estimated, however, that departures will be more numerous than hirings.

“For us, it is tragic to lack respiratory therapists. So patients are waiting for a diagnosis, whether it’s for asthma, but also patients who are waiting to be operated on for lung cancer, we need to know if they have sufficient respiratory function to be operated on, ” says Dr. Gagnon.

And those who work in the network are exhausted.

“We always do more with less, but at some point, people are tired,” says Laurence Roy-Hétu, respiratory therapist at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont.

“We are always called in emergency situations, situations where it is more critical, especially on the floors, for general cardiorespiratory care”, mentions for his part Frédéric St-Denis, also a respiratory therapist at Maisonneuve-Rosemont.

The situation is urgent, especially since patients have to stay longer in hospital because of this shortage.

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