Respiratory therapist uses experience, commitment

When Krista Dixon, a respiratory therapist with UCHealth for 17 years, learned her outpatient clinic would close due to the pandemic, she immediately signed up to help wherever she was needed.

And with her years of experience, she was needed most on the front lines helping in the ICU at Medical Center of the Rockies.

Having worked in the ICU before, she said, returning was like a homecoming. The surge of seriously ill patients, all suffering from COVID-19, was like nothing she’d seen in all her years working as a respiratory therapist. That didn’t deter her from the challenge ahead. She, like so many at UCHealth, worked 12-hour shifts, sometimes six to nine days in a row. She used her experience to make big differences in how staff cared for COVID-19 patients.

Because of the high risk of infection, Dixon used her knowledge of respiratory therapy to figure out a way to keep a patient on a ventilator while giving them manual breath timed with chest compressions when they went into arrest.

“It was so brilliant, and it reduced the risk for everyone else in the room,” said Brittani Ebel, Dixon’s supervisor.

It became the standard of care until filters were made available for ventilators. Teams could then resume normal protocol when a patient went into arrest.

In the ICU, the act of proning COVID-19 patients presented new challenges. To avoid endotracheal tube holders from causing pressure ulcers while patients were on their stomachs, Dixon taught her colleagues how to use an older method of taping the endotracheal tube. She learned the technique while working in the NICU, and she created a standard template for coworkers to easily measure, cut and place the tape.

“Krista was recognized by the medical staff for recommending and initiating these new approaches to patient care that resulted in no associated hospital-acquired pressure injuries or unplanned extubations for these patients,” said Jessi Willard, MCR’s chief nursing officer.

Respiratory therapy is Dixon’s passion and when things got hard, she didn’t back down. She used her knowledge and experience to provide patients a fighting chance against a new virus, while also keeping her coworkers safe.