By Debbie Bunch
January 14, 2025
If you’re thinking about changing jobs this year, you’re probably wondering what the job market is going to look like. Clearly things will be different in different parts of the country, but to gain a broad overview of the situation, we asked RT managers in the AARC’s Management Section to weigh in with the view from their own facilities.
Here is what three of them had to say.
Expansion drives need
Jessica Bartek, BSRC, RRT, manager of respiratory services at Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas in Austin, currently has 49 therapists in her department. But that number is expected to increase because the hospital is undergoing an expansion.
She’s worried there might not be enough people to take those jobs. “Our applicant flow has dropped off immensely since after the pandemic,” she said. “We have been trying to backfill positions for many years now for our nightshift positions and unfortunately as we hire, we still have RTs leave.”
The last three therapists who left the department moved out of state to gain a different perspective and more experience in higher level skills. The fact that therapists in her hospital system do not intubate or provide vascular access has been a stumbling block in retaining staff, and in general she feels like Texas has a way to go when it comes to allowing RTs to practice at the top of their license.
On the bright side, her hospital does support a respiratory therapy assistant (RTA)-to-RRT program. Out of the five RTAs in her department now, two have committed to joining the department as RRTs once they graduate from the program and obtain their license to practice.
She is grateful for that program, as she has had limited success with other recruitment methods. “We have held recruitment events in the past with our other hospitals in the network, however it really just turns into competing amongst ourselves with the other five larger hospitals in our network as we all need RRTs,” she said.
Once she does entice someone to come in for an interview, though, she does her best to ensure they will stick around. “I do focus on future plans during the interview process in hopes of hiring RRTs for the long term,” she said. “I also think it’s important to hear previous employment experiences during the interview, as this is when you can really reflect and hear about a candidate’s work ethic,” she said.
Being a clinical site helps
Patti DeJuilio, MS, RRT, RRT-ACCS, RRT-NPS, FAARC, is director of respiratory and diagnostic services at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, IL. She has 58 RTs on staff now and as of this writing in mid-December 2024, one open position.
She’s seen her numbers go up significantly over the past few years. “We have increased by almost five FTEs in the last five years due to increased volume and acuity and also increased expectations of RT assessments and protocol use,” she said.
DeJuilio notes that her hospital is a clinical site for several schools and that helps when it comes to recruiting. “We accept as many students as possible for training in all areas of the hospital, including NICU and PICU, and that is typically the pool we hire from,” she said.
She says they will be hiring a new grad for their open nightshift position, and they are always looking for candidates who are interested in working in the NICU and PICU. “We do look for candidates interested in PICU and NICU as we have a large volume of little ones,” she said.
Long wish list in paradise
Lynn Reinert, MHSA, RRT, a hospital management officer at Kona Community Hospital in Kealakekua, HI, lives in one of the most beautiful places on earth, but as she puts it, also one of the most expensive for RTs or anyone else to live.
The fact that the Hawaiian Islands are so far removed from the rest of the U.S. complicates matters further when it comes to hiring qualified therapists.
“We currently have a total of 13 therapists, not all full time, and seven of them are travelers,” she said. “Of the six that are not travelers, one is a lead, two are casual hire — per diem — and one is a .6.”
That makes running RT services in the hospital a challenge. “I would like to have all staff and no travelers,” she said, noting that while many of her travelers are fantastic therapists, she prefers to have staff who are permanent residents of the island because she feels like that gives them more “skin in the game.”
“These people become part of the community and a more vested participant in the team as a whole,” she continued. She also prefers to hire RRTs over CRTs because she believes therapists who have invested the time and energy into earning their profession’s highest credential are more likely to want to work at the top of the field.
Filling her department with these wish-list RTs, however, is difficult because her HR department doesn’t have the resources to post jobs on major employment sites like Indeed. The relatively low pay on the island is another big issue. “It is very frustrating that we are pushed to eliminate the cost of travelers but yet as state employees the pay is so low you can’t make a living without another job or another person contributing to your household income,” she said.
Her hospital is doing what it can to help. “We are working with Charter College and trying to develop a plan where local residents interested in the RT field can do their didactic portion online and the clinical portion with our team,” said Reinert. “Sort of a ‘grow your own’ deal.”
It’s a plan that could work because right now the island of Hawaii has no schools for respiratory therapy — the closest one is a plane ride away on Oahu — and other job opportunities on the island are fairly limited as well. “We are hoping to open the opportunity to people who aren’t interested in hospitality or nursing, which are the only two available careers on the island,” she said.
Factors to consider
The hiring challenges being faced by these three RT managers may not be typical of every hiring manager in the country, but they do show the range of factors that go into recruiting and retaining staff. RTs seeking new jobs this year would do well to keep them in mind as they work through the application and interviewing processes.
