Respiratory therapist finds 
meaning in his work

LIMA — Losing his dad to lung cancer, Bruce Parkins had a decision to make.

“I thought, I can either muddle the rest of my life in my dad's death or I can make his death meaningful,” said Parkins, a registered respiratory therapist at Bluffton Hospital.

“So I decided I would go into respiratory and help people with their problems,” he said. “I saw the things he went through.”

That was 1986, and soon after Parkins enrolled in the respiratory therapist program at then Lima Technical College. He went to work at the hospital in 1990, and later went back to school to further his degree. He graduated from Rhodes State College in 2000. Parkins, of Lima, currently teaches CPR at the school.

Parkins, 55, works in the hospital's cardiopulmonary department. He works in both the emergency room and medical services department, often giving breathing treatments and helping people suffering from asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

“We're called in on all C-sections to make sure the baby starts breathing and the heart is adequate,” he said.

For the past 18 years, Parkins has gone into schools to talk to pupils about the dangers of tobacco use. He also does a smoking cessation program for juveniles in the Hardin County court system.

“It gives me a self satisfaction inside,” he said. “I know in my heart that they have the education.”

Providing education and promoting a healthy community is something the hospital does all the time, Parkins said. He describes the hospital's role in the community as enormous.

“Reaching out and touching the lives of people to help them be healthier and giving them the education for them to stay that way is very, very important, and I think we do a fair amount of that here,” he said.

Parkins has no plans of leaving the hospital, saying he'll retire from it. It's a “special place,” that he calls his second home.

“I enjoy the people I work with,” he said. “The feeling of satisfaction of someone leaving the hospital healed, and able to go on with their daily life, is the ultimate reason for what I do.”

The entire hospital staff works together, each a piece of the puzzle, Parkins said. Being small, he said, allows for those close working relationships and more one-on-one patient care.

As the hospital renovates and adds space, Parkins can be even more confident of his future.

“It does give you a sense of we are going to be here and the community wants us here,” he said. “It is a reoccurring statement that we hear, that the community is so glad that Bluffton Hospital is here.”