Introduction
Respiratory therapy is an important part of healthcare that requires the therapist to have a broad range of skills and knowledge. In nursing, respiratory care requires high skills both in cardiology and pulmonology, and extensive knowledge about the diseases infecting the respiratory tract. Due to their responsibilities in maintaining airway management and intensive care, respiratory therapists are often in charge of managing life support and the related staff.
Respiratory care is an area in medicine that requires extensive specialized training both through formal and informal mechanisms. As a result, there are many courses and educational materials available to the medical and nursing students. Evaluating their effectiveness can be a hard job for a tutor or the therapist himself if he is practicing self-learning.
For this reason, it is important to be able to evaluate the materials studied objectively for both strengths and weaknesses, and how to advance the practice of respiratory care.
Respiratory Care Study Material
The first learning material in question is the Leadership Institute (n.d.). It provides information in numerous fields, including courses for respiratory therapists, created by experts in the field of respiratory care education, research, and management, for the purpose of increasing the students’ depth of knowledge. The courses are designed to be completed at one’s pace and in a format that is most comfortable for the user.
The second set of course materials is the Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Educator Course. The course studies the COPD, which is a lung disease with symptoms of long-term poor airflow, breathlessness, and cough with mucus. As more and more people become afflicted by the disease, it has become more important for medical staff to be able to discuss this issue with the patients, educate them about it, and create the motivation for them to overcome it.
The final certification reviewed is the Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support course. Its purpose is to practice the essential skills for the urgent treatment of cardiac arrests, strokes, and other similar life-threatening dangers. The course focuses on the teamwork and its importance in timely dealing with the affected patients. The course provides additional guidelines for respiratory care specialists and supplies them with knowledge on behavior in challenging cardiovascular and respiratory emergencies.
The few flaws that can be attributed to these certifications are of their web-based nature, which implies a lack of hands-on practices for the staff, and that can impede their effectiveness in the early stages of actual work. Another issue is their relatively high price, which can also create a barrier for some of the students. However, both of these issues are offset by the high quality of materials in the courses.
The advantages of the studied certifications
All three courses provide vital information for the development and preparation of respiratory care specialists. They all address issues that a therapist will encounter at some point in his career.
The Leadership Institute provides the students with access to vast abundances of course materials related to their specialization. The respiratory care course gives the students information in Education, Management, and Research, allowing future therapists to study them in any combination. For example, it allows the students to not only learn methods of respiratory therapy, but also receive advice on how to deal with a client, organize a medical team, improve one’s leadership skills, develop and conduct research studies, and more. The other two courses provide equally important skills for treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and more urgent heart and lungs related emergencies.
Conclusion
Ultimately, this is a very useful set of courses, which vastly advances the practice of respiratory care, while simultaneously providing education in other related and relevant skills, both medical and social.
Reference
Leadership Institute. (n.d.). Web.