MultiCare INW anniversary: Long-time Deaconess respiratory therapist reflects on 43-year career

Editor’s note: This piece is part of an ongoing series highlighting MultiCare’s impact in the Inland Northwest over the last five years through profiles of our team members, providers, patients and volunteers.

Many things have changed for Sally Rennebohm-Lutz over the past 43 years at MultiCare Deaconess Hospital.

Digital charting didn’t exist those first few decades. Hygiene safety standards have vastly improved. Patients can’t smoke in their rooms anymore. There’s new and innovative equipment, even for the hospital’s tiniest patients in the neonatal intensive care unit. And more often than not, open-heart surgery patients no longer need respiratory therapy.

As a respiratory therapist for more than four decades, Rennebohm-Lutz says it’s been exciting to see such advancements and learn better ways to care for patients. Because respiratory therapists are tasked with helping patients breathe, they can be called to help anyone in the hospital, no matter their age or health condition — which means it’s important to always keep learning.

“I had been here for 42 years, and even after that long, there were still patients who would come in with something new and something different to learn,” she says.

But that’s also what she enjoyed most.

“I loved the diversity and working with premature babies all the way up to people over 100 years old,” Rennebohm-Lutz says. “You work with cardiac, trauma, respiratory diseases, post-surgical and so on. Even though it’s kind of the same thing every day, every patient is different.”

Patient care continued to change, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. At the time she was considering retirement but decided to stay on board to help care for the many patients in need of respiratory care.

Rennebohm-Lutz “halfway retired” in January 2021 and switched to a part-time role to help fill schedule gaps. She fully retired in May of that year. The Deaconess Volunteer Services team wasted no time scooping her up, though. By June 2021, she was enrolled in volunteer orientation and began working the patient registration desk once a week.

“Deaconess took care of me in a sense,” she says. “They gave me a job. They were always good to me, so I wanted to give something back.”

Outside her volunteer shift, Rennebohm-Lutz says she’s still adjusting to retired life.

She first moved to Spokane in 1976, graduated from Spokane Community College in 1979 and immediately began working for the Deaconess respiratory therapy department. She and her husband raised their family in Spokane, and he retired a few years before she did.

“With COVID, travel hasn’t been a big thing. Sometimes when I do something just for fun, I feel almost guilty,” she says. “I’m also figuring out a routine with both my husband and I home now. … We have never been with each other 24/7.”

Reflecting on the many changes she witnessed over her career, Rennebohm-Lutz says she’s grateful for the positives MultiCare Health System brought to Deaconess over the past five years. She says it’s been fun to see the way MultiCare embeds itself within the community to help grow the Deaconess name, as well as the organization’s commitment to updating equipment, technology and the clinical environment.

Just as important as the advancements she saw, Rennebohm-Lutz appreciates the lessons she learned from those around her. For example, recent medical school graduates demonstrating new ways to care for patients and learning compassion and empathy from her own patients. The lessons are not just work-related, she says, but also focused on understanding that everyone is going through something different.

“Back when I was in my 20s I had a procedure in the hospital and seeing the way the care team acted taught me how to better understand what a patient feels in that moment,” she says. “I was always thinking ‘How would I feel if I were them?’”

Rennebohm-Lutz jokes she will fully retire once she has learned it all, but that day hasn’t come yet. For now, she’s excited to be the first face to greet patients when they arrive at the Deaconess registration desk, and to continue to care for them just as she has done for decades.