03/14/2024
Pulmonary rehabilitation—restoring a patient’s ability to breathe on their own—is a crucial aspect of the rehabilitation process in our critical illness recovery hospitals. Select Medical takes a team approach to pulmonary rehab, with every member of the interdisciplinary team playing a key part in helping a patient regain their ability to breathe independently.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation Week serves as a reminder of the critical role that respiratory therapy plays in advancing the healing journey. This week, we’ll show you how our physician-led interdisciplinary teams work together, implementing different therapies to help our patients breathe freely again.
Respiratory therapists use flutter valves (a tube that only allows air to move in one direction) and positive expiratory pressure therapy, which helps get air into the lungs so that it can be expelled forcefully enough to dislodge mucus, to help a patient clear their airway and strengthen the muscles needed for breathing. Timed breathing trials are performed to strengthen the lungs. During these short bursts, the patient spends increasingly longer stretches of time off the ventilator and without supplemental oxygen support.
Speech-language pathologists use a Passy-Muir valve – a specialized valve that allows mechanically ventilated patients to speak. It is placed on the end of a patient’s trach tube, not only to help them regain their voice but to strengthen their lungs. Swallowing exercises and a flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) study can lead to resuming a more normal diet. Patients who can communicate and eat on their own are less anxious and more likely to participate in therapy.
Physical therapists implement a mobility protocol soon after the patient enters one of our critical illness recovery hospitals. By ensuring that the patient is sitting up twice a day and exercising their body, they grow stronger, improving their ability to breathe on their own.
Registered dietitians ensure ventilator patients are well nourished so they have the energy to participate in pulmonary rehabilitation. By adjusting a patient’s calorie intake to meet their needs, dietitians can slow weight loss and preserve the muscle necessary for patients to breathe independently.
Occupational therapists adapt activities of daily living to make it easier for patients to complete these tasks based on their current abilities. Common day-to-day activities, such as getting dressed, doing laundry, cooking and transferring between surfaces can seem impossible for pulmonary rehabilitation patients who have reduced endurance and strength. By teaching these patient’s adaptive strategies that reduce the energy needed to do these tasks, like sitting down to put your pants on or using a grabbing claw to reach far away objects, occupational therapists help their patients regain independence, conserve energy and build endurance over time.
Nurses are the backbone of every therapy team. They are the gatekeepers of care and a source of information for patients and their families. By monitoring and administering medications, they can help a patient achieve a state of wakefulness or painlessness that can make the difference during a day of therapy.
