PCHS recognizes respiratory staff for Respiratory Care Week

Perkins County Health Services recognizes Joshua Cunningham, Respiratory Therapist for PCHS, during Respiratory Care Week.

Respiratory Care Week, this year from Oct. 24-30, is a week designated to recognizing the work of respiratory therapists. 

During the pandemic, respiratory therapists have been on the front lines more than they would be normally, working countless hours away from loved ones and risking their personal health to fight COVID-19.

Cunningham has been a respiratory therapist (RT) with PCHS since they opened their respiratory therapy department, about three and a half years ago he estimated.

He said his typical duties as an RT include everything from educating patients about inhaler use, to administering those nebulizers and inhalers while they are in the hospital, all the way to responding to traumas and assisting anesthesia with intubation and stabilization while they wait for transport to arrive.

Though the first time COVID made its rounds in Perkins County wasn’t too bad according to Cunningham, the new cases hitting the area have made things more difficult at the hospital.

“Because our bigger care centers that we typically send our sicker patients to have been so full, we haven’t been able to send some of those patients out,” Cunningham said.

Since patients are not getting transferred at the rate they normally would, he added the acuity—or intensity of care provided to a patient—has greatly increased, which Cunningham said can make things more stressful.

“But I think we have done amazing, and it has definitely brought respiratory care to the forefront,” he said. 

“A lot of people generally don’t know what a respiratory therapist is, but COVID has definitely changed that.”

PCHS CEO Neil Hilton feels that through the entire past year and a half, and of particular significance the last six to eight weeks, having a “fantastic, full-service, super-responsive” RT in the form of Cunningham has been of tremendous value and benefit to PCHS.

Hilton added that Cunningham’s expertise in leading and tending the respiratory demands and clinical needs of patients of late, working right in the mix and alongside medical staff and nursing staff makes it hard to imagine being without his efforts right now.

In the last couple of months, COVID has made a reappearance in the local area, resulting in an influx of COVID patients at PCHS.

Cunningham noted it hasn’t been “terrible,” but he has been at the hospital every day to help take care of COVID patients since the second wave of illness hit the area.

Unfortunately, he said, this has impacted his ability to spend time with his family.

“If it wasn’t for my wife, who has picked up all of the slack at home from me not being there, this wouldn’t be able to happen,” he said. 

Respiratory Care Week is meaningful to Cunningham because he said it feels nice to receive recognition for the work he and other RTs do, but notes the nurses also deserve recognition for the hard work they have put in especially during the last six to eight weeks at PCHS.

“The nursing staff has, very quickly and in a very short time line, gotten comfortable with some of the more advanced respiratory stuff that I do in an attempt to help take some of the load off of me as the sole respiratory therapist in the facility,” Cunningham said. 

“That has been greatly appreciated, that they’ve been able to step out of their comfort zone and learn new things.”

He added he feels the whole staff, not just respiratory therapy, is responsible for the care PCHS is able to provide for patients. 

Perhaps the most under-recognized in the whole situation, he continued, are the families and significant others of hospital staff who are at home “having to pick up the slack while we work the hours we have to work.”