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Respiratory therapists (RTs) work hard to save lives. It's a career filled with life-and-death stories about real people. And sometimes it's even about helping dogs.

Home care respiratory therapist Joanna Witek says one of her most unusual patients was a dog.

"We had a patient -- a vet -- who phoned us and said this woman's dog almost died in her house," she explains. "The dog had congestive heart failure, and she didn't want to lose him like that so she's purchasing oxygen for emergency use by her dog."

Being an RT "can mean more than you think," says Witek. "You never know what you're going to be doing.

"I always wanted to be in the medical field and help people, but I didn't want to be a physician or a nurse," she says. A friend who was studying nursing at the time suggested Witek might like being an RT.

"It's a pretty high-adrenaline job in a hospital," Witek warns. "You have to work very well under pressure....A person could be in cardiac arrest, they're dying, and you're helping to save their life."

As a home care RT, she enjoys getting to know people a little more than she could in a hospital setting. "In home care, you might have a patient for one, two or 10 years," she says.

"You work a lot on your own. You have responsibility for patient education -- spending a lot of time educating patients on the actual equipment they're using, such as oxygen and related respiratory equipment as well as their disease process, lifestyle, how oxygen can benefit their lifestyle. It's a lot of [time] on the road because you go from home to home," she says.

"In home care, you often work alone. But in a hospital system, you really work as part of a team. It can be very rewarding, working with physicians, specialists, nurses. When you have a very severely ill patient who leaves intensive care and can walk out, it's very rewarding."

You can work with everyone from babies to grandparents. Yes, it's exciting and rewarding.

But RTs can't save everyone. Some patients don't make it.

Ron Beckett teaches respiratory therapy in Hamden, Connecticut. He remembers the high school student whose car crashed into a telephone pole. The ambulance rushed the boy to hospital. Beckett and the rest of the medical team did everything they could, but the boy went into a coma. After three days, the doctor announced that the teenager was brain dead. He'd never wake up.

"But the boy's family couldn't let him go," Beckett says. "We kept him on a mechanical ventilator for over a month. We used respiratory therapy day and night to prevent pneumonia and to keep any lung infection from spreading."

The entire staff cared about the patient who was once a healthy, intelligent, friendly boy. Eventually, his parents decided to stop life support and let the boy die.

The case left its mark. "Later, I was at home watching a TV program where the main character, also a teenager, wrecked his car and had to go to the hospital. I burst into tears."

Tracy Benenson is an RT in Pennsylvania. "Sometimes you need some emotional distance, or the job can really get to you," she says.

"Respiratory therapy isn't a 9-to-5 job. You can't leave it behind at the end of the day. Your actions as part of a team may have pulled someone back from the brink of death. We know that our efforts may have given a grandmother the chance to be with her grandchildren for another Christmas," says Benenson.

Respiratory therapy is a high-tech profession. RTs use complex tools and machines every day. Beckett says these devices quickly give the RT a lot of important information at the patient's bedside. It gives them the opportunity to make better decisions and to make them faster than ever.

But RTs need to know how their equipment works. They need to be able to fix something quickly if the machine breaks down. Every second counts.

Pat Evans also teaches respiratory therapy. As an RT, he makes sure he never uses any machine or tool unless he knows it inside and out. Once, Evans stayed by a patient's bed for hours until he was sure that the hospital's new ventilator worked perfectly.

Beckett chose respiratory care more than 20 years ago because it reached people during the "most critical time of their illness." He also liked the complex technology. "But the most important thing an RT needs," Beckett says, "is the ability to communicate with all kinds of people." RTs enjoy getting to know their patients.

Benenson advises RTs to look carefully to discover where they work best. "For me, it got harder to treat infants and children after I had children of my own."

Mark Simmons is an RT and director of the school of respiratory therapy where Benenson teaches part time. He does a lot of career planning with his students.

Many new RTs begin as staff therapists in hospitals. RTs also face competition. "More often, nurses are doing some of our basic tasks," says Simmons. In the future, hospitals may expect RTs to work mainly in more critical care areas and to work even closer with doctors to evaluate breathing disorders.

There are many career opportunities for experienced RTs. Some start their own businesses. Some move into education and training, respiratory therapy research or get additional training and qualify for other health-care jobs.

RTs enjoy the challenge of identifying and treating respiratory problems. They love using their skills to improve or save lives. Sometimes they apply their skills in creative ways.

Beckett recalls a man whose heart stopped following a heart attack. In the patient's room, doctors, nurses and others surrounded the bed. Beckett stood at the head of the patient's bed. He snaked a plastic tube down the man's windpipe. Using a device called a manual resuscitator, Beckett kept forcing oxygen into the lungs, buying time.

The man didn't respond to anything the doctors, nurses or others did. From the foot of the bed, the frustrated doctor watched the flatline on the monitor. He asked for ideas from the team.

"Why don't you shake the bed?" someone suggested. The doctor shrugged, bent down, and shook the bed. The man's heart started.

Beckett's story illustrates the inventiveness and quick thinking that RTs admire. They prize these characteristics in themselves: they're traits that make them valuable members of the health-care team.