Saint Joseph Hospital is a 433-bed facility located in Lexington Kentucky. Founded in 1877 a small group of Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky led by Sister Euphrasia Stafford began their health ministry. Their mission was to provide compassionate care to the poor and underserved – a tradition still carried out today. Saint Joseph Hospital primarily serves central and eastern Kentucky with a full range of services including distinguished awards for cardiology orthopedics and stroke care. CHI Saint Joseph Health supports 5000 active employees 8 hospitals specialty clinics and a Medical Group with more than 200 locations across Central and Eastern KY. CommonSpirit Health was formed by the alignment of Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) and Dignity Health in 2019. With our combined resources CommonSpirit is committed to building healthy communities advocating for those who are poor and vulnerable and innovating how and where healing can happen both inside our hospitals and out in the community.

Job Summary / Purpose

The Respiratory Care Student Practitioner possesses working knowledge of routine respiratory care and has displayed age-specific competence in his/her educational program for pediatric (ages 13 months to 11 years), adolescent (ages 12 to 17), adult (ages 18 to 65) and geriatric (ages 66 and over) patients. The incumbent conducts himself/herself in a professional manner and is courteous to patients, physicians, visitors, members of the department and all other healthcare personnel. The incumbent supports and contributes to departmental productivity and organizational objectives by functioning as an integrated member of the respiratory care team and performs services consistent with his/her scope of licensure. The incumbent supports and exhibits behaviors consistent with the organization’s mission and values in offering hope and healing to all.

Essential Key Job Responsibilities

1. Administers non-medicated aerosol and humidity therapy.
2. Administers oxygen therapy (including implementation of oxygen therapy protocol where appropriate).
3. Administers aerosolized medication.
4. Administers incentive spirometry.
5. Cleans and reprocesses respiratory therapy equipment.
6. Administers bronchial hygiene and performs chest physiotherapy (including implementation of bronchial hygiene protocol where appropriate).
7. Performs cardiopulmonary resuscitation and manual ventilation during resuscitation attempts and aides in rapid response calls when appropriate.
8. Licensed Respiratory Therapists are qualified to perform respiratory care procedures as evidenced by education, training, experience and competency assessments.  Preceptor supervision will be required during onboarding and orientation.  The therapist should be able to independently carry out all respiratory therapy procedures at completion of orientation.  Critical care competencies may require additional education and training (i.e. intubation, arterial line insertions) Once these competencies are completed the employee is able to independently perform the procedures.
9. Performs other duties, within the scope of licensure, as assigned.

The job summary and responsibilities listed above are designed to indicate the general nature of the work performed within this job. They are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all job responsibilities required of employees assigned to this job. Employees may be required to perform other duties as assigned.