Respiratory Therapist Resume Guide: Credential, Vents, Protocols

A practical guide from the team behind PlainResume, the free resume builder.

Respiratory managers staff by unit and by shift, and they're reading for one thing: can this therapist be given the ICU tonight. Write so they can answer that in the first few lines.

The credential block, under your name

Credential, specialty credentials, state license with expiration, and the card set. Managers verify currency before reading further, and specialty credentials — adult or neonatal/pediatric critical care, pulmonary function, asthma education, sleep — are what a posting is often screening for. If one is in progress, give the exam date rather than omitting it, as the certifications guide advises; and put your degree level on the page, since the RRT and a bachelor's together open the supervisory track.

Name the units and the populations

• Adult critical care: medical, surgical, cardiothoracic, neuro or trauma ICU — say which, and the bed count.
• Neonatal and pediatric: NICU level, PICU, delivery attendance and resuscitation, pediatric transport.
• Emergency and acute floors: ED coverage, step-down, med-surg treatment loads, rapid response.
• Diagnostics and outpatient: pulmonary function lab, sleep lab and titrations, pulmonary rehab, asthma education clinics.
• Post-acute and home: LTACH and vent-dependent units, skilled nursing, home care and DME setups, patient and family teaching.

A therapist who ran NICU deliveries and one who ran a sleep lab both have real expertise, and neither should assume the other's posting will read theirs as a match.

Vents, airways, and the protocols you ran

Vent count and ventilators by name, modes and populations, weaning and extubation work, airway management and intubation assistance, trach care and decannulation, noninvasive ventilation and high-flow, ABG sampling and interpretation, aerosolized and specialty therapies, bronchoscopy and procedural support, ECMO or high-frequency work if you've done it. Most importantly, say whether you practiced under therapist-driven protocols — that distinction tells a manager how much independent judgment you carried, in the same way scope language does across the allied health professions. Never list a therapy your department never let you run.

Codes, rapid response, and the load you carried

Write your role on the code team and rapid response, transports you covered, and whether you were the only therapist in the building overnight — solo house coverage is a serious responsibility and it should be explicit. Then the workload: patients or treatments per shift, units covered, shift length, and call. Add charting in the EMR by name (Epic or Cerner), protocol documentation, and QI work like ventilator-associated event prevention bundles or extubation-failure review. If you take nights, weekends or rotating shifts, say so in the contact line the way the shift guide recommends, because it genuinely moves you up a staffing list.

New graduates, and where RT goes next

New grads: lead with exam status and license, then write rotations as experience — sites and types, units rotated through, competencies signed off, populations seen. Any job where you stayed calm with frightened people counts, including CNA work or EMS, and both of those also share the acute-care instincts managers are listening for.

Later, scope is the ladder: charge therapist, preceptor and clinical instructor for a program's students, protocol and policy development, ECMO or transport team, pulmonary function or sleep lab specialization, education coordinator, manager. Some therapists bridge into nursing or advanced practice — if that's the plan, write the clinical judgment and the protocol work rather than the treatment counts, which is the reframe any step across professions needs.

Frequently asked questions