AI exposure: Respiratory Therapists
Assess, treat, and care for patients with breathing disorders. Assume primary responsibility for all respiratory care modalities, including the supervision of respiratory therapy technicians. Initiate and conduct therapeutic procedures; maintain patient records; and select, assemble, check, and operate equipment.
Reading this score
computedAt 13.1% of weighted task load, Respiratory Therapists sits at the 21th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 66.4% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 23 tasks it averages 2.75 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Read prescription, measure arterial blood gases, and review patient information to assess..., at 60.0%. The least is Transport patients to the hospital or within the hospital, at 0.0%. A gap of 60.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 69 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 23 tasks, 2 are currently banded exposed, 5 assisted and 16 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.27 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.88 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.09 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.50 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.71 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.75 | 0-3 |
Task by task
23 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read prescription, measure arterial blood gases, and review patient information to assess patient condition. | 60.0% | 40.0% | 0.0% | 4.79 | exposed |
| Maintain charts that contain patients' pertinent identification and therapy information. | 60.0% | 40.0% | 0.0% | 4.66 | exposed |
| Relay blood analysis results to a physician. | 46.7% | 53.3% | 0.0% | 4.78 | assisted |
| Determine requirements for treatment, such as type, method and duration of therapy, precautions to be taken, or medication and dosages, compatible with physicians' orders. | 23.3% | 26.7% | 50.0% | 4.63 | assisted |
| Enforce safety rules and ensure careful adherence to physicians' orders. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.70 | assisted |
| Explain treatment procedures to patients to gain cooperation and allay fears. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.58 | assisted |
| Monitor patient's physiological responses to therapy, such as vital signs, arterial blood gases, or blood chemistry changes, and consult with physician if adverse reactions occur. | 11.7% | 38.3% | 50.0% | 4.79 | assisted |
| Work as part of a team of physicians, nurses, or other healthcare professionals to manage patient care by assisting with medical procedures or related duties. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.70 | untouched |
| Perform pulmonary function and adjust equipment to obtain optimum results in therapy. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.41 | untouched |
| Demonstrate respiratory care procedures to trainees or other healthcare personnel. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.44 | untouched |
| Educate patients and their families about their conditions and teach appropriate disease management techniques, such as breathing exercises or the use of medications or respiratory equipment. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.40 | untouched |
| Conduct tests, such as electrocardiograms (EKGs), stress testing, or lung capacity tests, to evaluate patients' cardiopulmonary functions. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.37 | untouched |
| Teach, train, supervise, or use the assistance of students, respiratory therapy technicians, or assistants. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Perform bronchopulmonary drainage and assist or instruct patients in performance of breathing exercises. | 4.2% | 20.8% | 75.0% | 4.49 | untouched |
| Monitor cardiac patients, using electrocardiography devices, such as a holter monitor. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Inspect, clean, test, and maintain respiratory therapy equipment to ensure equipment is functioning safely and efficiently, ordering repairs when necessary. | 3.0% | 5.4% | 91.7% | 4.63 | untouched |
| Use a variety of testing techniques to assist doctors in cardiac or pulmonary research or to diagnose disorders. | 2.9% | 9.6% | 87.5% | 4.19 | untouched |
| Attend high-risk and caesarian section infant deliveries to provide neonatal respiratory care as needed. | 0.7% | 7.6% | 91.7% | 3.54 | untouched |
| Set up and operate devices, such as mechanical ventilators, therapeutic gas administration apparatus, environmental control systems, or aerosol generators, following specified parameters of treatment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.94 | untouched |
| Provide emergency care, such as artificial respiration, external cardiac massage, or assistance with cardiopulmonary resuscitation. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.72 | untouched |
| Make emergency visits to resolve equipment problems. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.66 | untouched |
| Perform endotracheal intubation to maintain open airways for patients who are unable to breathe on their own. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.31 | untouched |
| Transport patients to the hospital or within the hospital. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.67 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.