Publications

The Respiratory Care Board of California was facing numerous issues that were expected to affect the future of the respiratory care workforce. These issues included the impact of changing the educational requirement for entry into practice from an associate’s degree to a baccalaureate degree; the implications of granting respiratory care practitioners prescriptive authority under protocol; determining whether the current requirements of clinical education are adequate and whether the organization of the clinical education experience needs redefinition; the value of professional ethics and law courses that respiratory care practitioners are required to take; and the impact of increasing the number of continuing education hours required for respiratory care practitioners and determining the value of redefining their content. This workforce study, conducted under a contract with the Board, involved a variety of data collection and analytic methods, including a literature review, qualitative interviews with directors of pulmonary care services, qualitative survey of directors of pulmonary care services, analysis of educational curricula used to train respiratory care practitioners, qualitative interviews with directors of respiratory care education programs, and focus groups with practicing respiratory care practitioners. The outcome for these different project components was a report synthesizing the findings and was delivered to the Respiratory Care Board of California.

This report summarizes the findings from a research study of California’s respiratory care workforce conducted over the course of 18 months between July 2015 and December 2016. Study components included key informant interviews, a statewide survey of directors of respiratory care services, and a series of focus groups with currently employed respiratory therapists. The broad research issues included the preparedness of new graduate respiratory therapists (RT) to enter the workforce, supervised clinical experiences in respiratory therapy education, minimum degree requirements for entry into professional practice, and the utilization of RT-driven protocols.