Airwaves Winter 2018

A Brief Recap of Better Breathing:
The Research and Emerging Practices
As a practicing health care professional, it is important to attend
opportunities that will enhance the knowledge and bring innovative
ideas onto the table for practice in the future. There are
multiple outlets to self-educate and participate in professional
development activities, and they are important for the growth of a
respiratory therapist, regardless of where they are in their career.
On January 25-27, 2018, the Ontario Respiratory Care Society
(ORCS), Respiratory Therapy Society of Ontario (RTSO) and Ontario
Thoracic Society (OTS) held their annual joint Better Breathing
Conference (BBC). This avenue provided many occasions for
individuals involved in the respiratory care of patients to inquire
about new ideas and potential practices in the field. Attendees
included, but are not limited to, respiratory therapists, occupational
therapists, physiotherapists, nurses, physicians, social workers, and
pharmacists, whom all have dedicated their practice to improving
the lung health of all ages.
Shirley Quach,
RRT, HBSc
Despite the large literature pool available for many of the accepted
practices, continuous research is necessary for knowledge growth,
validation, and quality assurance. Sometimes, ongoing research
studies provide preliminary results that are beneficial to the health
care community; however, their results are not ready for publication
or for human clinical trials. Conferences provide the chance for
researchers to report their preliminary findings to a group of keen
interprofessionals who are open to the idea of advancing practices.
Conferences offer many lectures that are meant to educate their
audience of new and emerging practices and therapies. Take for
example, Dr. Ron Cohn’s presentation about CRISPR technology.
CRISPR, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats,
a genome editing system, is familiar to the genome engineering
field. CRISPR is used for editing specific locations in DNA, possibly
Page 23 RTSO Airwaves - Winter 2018