By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News

Patricia Chesnutt is one of 10 seniors in the Texas State University’s respiratory care program who is working at Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin to help shore up a personnel shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Chesnutt — who is days away from her May 16 college graduation — has been working for the past couple of weeks in her chosen career field.

“With Ascension, we are being rotated around the Austin hospitals wherever there is need in hope of lightening the load allowing the other therapists to handle the more critical patients,” Chesnutt said.

She rotates among the five Ascension Seton hospitals including sites in Round Rock, downtown Austin and Hayes County.

“Working on the frontline along with so many other healthcare workers is really special,” said Chesnutt, who graduated from Vandegrift in 2016. She was part of the soccer team that went to state several years in a row. 

“While there are concerns with being in the hospital working closely with these patients, it hasn’t been something that scares me,” Chesnutt said. “This is the line of work we as health care workers signed up for and trained to become because we want to help others no matter the circumstance.”

In late March, Ascension Seton was facing a manpower shortage because of COVID-19 and looked to Texas State for help, according to an article from the university’s newsroom.

“We had about 32 seniors who were interested, and 10 of those 32 were offered RTA positions,” said Gregg Marshall, chair of the Texas State Department of Respiratory Care in the article. “They’re all outstanding students, I’m telling you. They are all like the A-Team. All of these students have 4.0 grade averages, they’re unbelievable.”

Chesnutt and the other nine seniors began as RTAs several weeks ago, while continuing their respiratory program course work. 

“The students won’t be in the intensive care unit (ICU), and won’t be working with COVID patients,” Marshall said.

They work as backup for general floor therapy and less acute patients. They take care of the patients who are having non-critical respiratory problems, according to the Texas State article.

“It gets (experienced) staff… into the ICUs where they have skill and are approved to be, while our guys take up the therapy that needs to be done on the general medical and surgical floors,” Marshall said.

More workers will be able to help in respiratory care soon. On April 5, Governor Greg Abbott temporarily waived some requirements for respiratory therapy graduates to be licensed prior to joining the healthcare workforce. 

This will enable approximately 800 respiratory therapists graduating from all the different programs in Texas in May to immediately begin work during the pandemic, according to the Texas State article. 

“They could literally walk across the stage — if we were still walking across the stage for graduation — right into an ICU and work,” Marshall said. “When things calm down, then they’ll go back and take their board exams to get their license. The requirement is still there, it’s just deferred.”

For Chesnutt, she is keeping the coronavirus health crisis in perspective and is grateful for this opportunity to work in her field of choice.

“This pandemic while terrible has shed a whole new light on respiratory therapy,” Chesnutt said. “Many people did not know of the profession and still might not but it has brought us to the forefront. It is not the senior spring semester I imagined but it has brought many opportunities for growth and success.”

Texas State University posted Jayme Blaschke’s article on April 9 and parts of it were used in this article.

Work blessings

The Chesnutt family is thankful all three of their daughters are working during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Tom and Sharon Chesnutt have lived in Steiner Ranch since 1992. Both retired from the U.S. Army, she in 2008 and he a few months ago in January 2020. 

While Tom has completed training to go back to flying for Envoy, which is part of American Airlines, and hopes to go back to flying sometime in June, they feel blessed that their three daughters are all working during this challenging time.

Their oldest daughter, Annaka, graduated Texas State University with a degree in broadcast journalism and is on national TV on Shop LC, which is based in Austin. 

Their middle daughter, Katie, graduated from Texas Christian University and received her masters from University of North Texas in speech pathology and is currently working with children in the Dallas area. 

Their youngest, Patricia, is about to graduate from Texas State University’s respiratory care program. She is working at Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin, an opportunity that arose in late March due to a shortage of workers.

“We are so proud of each of our daughters to be working in the degree they graduated with, each still working at their jobs during this pandemic,” Sharon said. “We feel blessed they have jobs and loving what they do every day —  blessed!