A Seventh-day Adventist college in the United States has recently added new equipment and scholarships to benefit its respiratory care program students. Kettering College (KC), a healthcare professions training institution based in a suburb of Daytona, Ohio, obtained a MetaNab device for airway clearance and hyperinflation therapy, thanks to an education grant from Hill-Rom, a provider of medical technologies for the healthcare industry. The school also announced that its respiratory care program had added a specific scholarship for its first-time students.

School leaders believe the latest developments support KC efforts to benefit the students’ hands-on learning in the classroom. The improvements will also prepare students better for when they become respiratory therapists, said school officers who shared the news on the school’s official web page.

Noting that several of the clinical affiliates of KC currently use hyperinflation devices, program chair Nancy Colletti said that having the equipment at the school lab will help students learn how the equipment works in real-life situations. “Even more importantly, [they will learn] what the patient feels when they are receiving therapy,” she said. “Practice in the lab setting before using the device in the clinical environment helps our students better their communication with patients and deliver the best care.”

The new incentives for respiratory care students come at a time when health officers and practitioners around the world must deal with a global surge in respiratory diseases, according to reports by the World Health Organization and other health entities. Official reports said that hundreds of millions of people suffer and four million people die prematurely from respiratory diseases each year. Experts emphasize, however, that most major respiratory illnesses are avoidable.

Respiratory Care is one of the fastest growing occupations in the healthcare field in the United States, reported the school in the program web page, with the demand for respiratory therapists being the highest ever. On the information page, KC also reminded prospective students that the number of positions in the field is expected to grow 19 percent between 2012 and 2022, ahead of many other healthcare professions. In a 2016 survey, KC found out that 100 percent of its 2015 respiratory care graduates found a job in the field within two months of graduation.

Hill-Rom, the company that awarded the grant to KC to purchase the equipment, is known for supporting educational programs and providing continuous professional education for respiratory therapists. The three-year Bachelor of Science in respiratory care degree has also been accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care (CoARC), which enabled the program to obtain the grant. The program also boasts a 100 percent pass rate on national credentialing exams.

The school also reported that its respiratory care program won a Savina 300 ventilator last October, and recently had the machine delivered to campus.

Regarding new scholarships, Coletti said that the award for first-time students, which will be dispersed over six semesters, is a wonderful new development. “We are all very excited about the Respiratory Care scholarship! It will help us attract well-qualified students to the profession, as well as to Kettering College,” she said.