The department of respiratory therapy held its second Respiratory Therapy Research Day on March 21, with approximately 60 people attending the virtual event.
Organized by assistant professors Dr. Diana Sanchez-Ramirez and Dr. Louise Chartrand, the event was attended mostly by respiratory therapy students, faculty and clinicians. The organizers also gave presentations on their respective research work.
Sanchez-Ramirez gave a presentation on management of cough in patients with idiopathic interstitial lung disease (ILD) in primary care. A paper on this research was recently accepted for publication in the journal Chronic Respiratory Disease.
She said cough is a common symptom in ILDs that are idiopathic, or of unknown cause, but there is currently little information of its management in primary care. The objective of her study was to explore the frequency of cough-related consultations and the medications prescribed to patients with ILDs in primary care.
“One-quarter of patients with ILDs consulted primary care due to cough, and about a third of them received a prescription to address potentially underlying causes,” Sanchez-Ramirez said.
“While medically geared television shows are becoming more diverse about death and dying, there is still a lack of display of emotions and grieving,” Chartrand said.
“When death is expected, for example in terminal cancer, the person passes away at an opportune moment looking like they were going to sleep an ‘esthetic death’. When death is unexpected, either it’s being brushed off as another person who died or a complete tragedy,” she added. “The problem, is that by giving this portrait of death on television, it affects people’s expectations about how death is supposed to happened in real life.”
There were also 17 presentations from second- and third-year students in the bachelor of respiratory therapy program on a variety of topics. Third-year students Hannah Chale and Victoria Ploszay received an award for best presentation for their work on mesenchymal stem cell therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“Throughout our education in the respiratory therapy program, we have been made aware that the prevalence of chronic lung diseases, such as COPD, are on the rise. This not only puts a burden on the health-care system, but also impacts the individual’s quality of life. Thus, we began wondering if there were therapies out there that could ‘fix’ the actual damage COPD does to the lungs instead of just treating symptoms,” Ploszay said.
“We are very happy with the way our presentation went and feel very honored to have received the award,” Chale added. “We both appreciate how complex stem cell therapy can be and one of our presentation goals was to break the concepts down into clear and concise sections and show that this topic is approachable and doesn’t have to be as intimidating as one might think.”
The event also featured several breakout sessions chaired and evaluated by faculty and clinicians.
Sébastien Tessier, an alumnus of the program and registered respiratory therapist in Winnipeg, was the keynote speaker.
Tessier’s work includes adult and pediatric critical care, and he is actively involved in various professional initiatives such as language barriers in health care. He also holds a master of business administration degree from Dalhousie University, and is completing research with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba with a focus on aerosol therapies in pediatric patients.