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Whenever I think of the incident that transpired on that particular Thursday afternoon, I get a nasty feeling about the challenges of working as a respiratory therapist. Is it that all the health care practitioners should have a calling to their work or should work as a profession? As a respiratory therapist, I usually work in the intensive care and the operating rooms, but I also engage in the outpatient activities. I am a specialist and an educator in the fields of cardiology and pulmonology. Most of the patients I attend to are in the ICU and the emergency departments struggling for their lives. At times, I manage the pre-hospital and the hospital to hospital patient transport by air or by mobile road ambulance. Most of the patients have illnesses ranging from asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. Other have a heart attack and sleep disorders. On a certain Thursday afternoon late last year, I had one of the many challenges in my line of service.

I reported to work as usual and said a prayer before the start of my daily chores. I attended to several patients having varying illnesses, and most of them had a hope of getting well in due time. I decided to take a short rest during lunch hour after realizing that there were no more patients to attend. However, after few minutes, I received a call from the hospital superintendent that there was an emergency case I required to attend. The details clarified that I had to travel with several nurses to a nearby village to seek what we could do to save the situation. There was a man in his later forties who lived with asthma for a long time. I looked at him in desperation knowing that I could do my best to save the situation though he was in a life-threatening stage. He could not talk, had flared nostrils, his skin was bluish tint from the mouth region and under the fingernails. The man lacked adequate oxygen circulation in the blood stream.

My professional’s values require that I serve to the best of my ability to save lives and restore health. We teamed up with the nurses to address the condition, but our attempts seemed futile. All our first aid attempts failed to change the situation. I instructed the nurses to lay him in the ambulance and rush to the hospital for further treatment. I think that it was a rough day for me since every other attempt to save the man failed. He lost his life as we worked tirelessly to save it. I felt discouraged, guilty, and emotionally disturbed and could not attend to other patients that day. I questioned my work as a respiratory therapist and whether it was a calling or out of influence to study the particular discipline. According to my understanding, such occurrences were inevitable, but some could be saved regardless of their severity. I did not understand why the man could lose his life in the hands of professionals and experts in the field.

It was sad news to the close family members and very challenging to break the same news to the wife who was also ill of another health condition. In some instances, the experiences of healthcare practitioners are hard to relate with though they form part of the daily life. The work of a respiratory therapist is challenging, but the desire to continue improving the quality of life compels me to serve wholeheartedly.

This paper discusses holism and reductionism in health care and athletics gear industries.

Healthcare industry
The primary concept of holism is that its proponents have a common belief that things are better understood in their wholeness rather than when broken into component parts (Freeman, 2005). The body functions as a complete unit. It’s thus not possible to trigger a cell without triggering the whole body. This same concept, when applied to the healthcare industry, could mean that all aspects of healthcare provision are considered more realistic and more gratifying when what is under consideration is treated in its original state rather than in parts. For instance, if a person diagnosed with a certain illness is admitted to a healthcare facility, he is considered wholly in need of medication. In any case, the pain or agony in a particular part of the body affects the whole body (Freeman, 2005). When medication is applied, its carried in the blood to heal the place in pain though this affects the whole body. It’s thus not possible to isolate any part of the human body no matter whether it’s the part/organ most affected by the ailment. When a person suffers mental delusion, the whole body is affected. If he suffers stomach upsets, the whole body is considered sick or unhealthy.

There is one thing that comes out from the above consideration; that healthcare service provision is a large enterprise requiring many and different health care providers including pharmacists, psychologists, dentists, opticians, etc. who are closely interdependent. Their system of work is so much intertwined that if one breaks out of the system, it may crash. If sufficient healthcare is to be accorded to patients, then these departments have to work as a whole and interdependently rather than separately (Ahn et al., 2006)

Reductionism is, however, the complete diversion from holism. For reductionists, the parts are crucial if the whole is to be understood. In the healthcare context, reductionists believe that the patient has to be studied more aggressively though analyzing the organs affected rather than the whole body (Ahn et al., 2006) For them, the symptoms alone cannot be used by a physician to know what really the patient suffers. When a patient is admitted, each organ reported to bring about his/her suffering is looked into independently. Smaller concepts of studying or researching what may be the cause of the problems in the various parts of the body are applied. More so, the medication for the differently affected parts of the body are given and prescribed separately (Ahn et al., 2006).

Athletics gear manufacturing industry
This industry deals with the manufacturing of athletics protective aids for athletes and related apparel. Such industries produce athletics goods such as sailboards, skates, exercise machines and other playground equipment. They also manufacture protective goods for athletes such h as helmets, athletics pads, snowshoes, shin guards among other protective gear.

Holism and reductionism apply in this industry in various dimensions. In the dimension of production, holism occurs in the notion that athletics gear industry is incomplete if it produces or manufactures a particular set of apparel. For instance, this industry must produce all focal goods required by athletes for it to be termed so. Reductionism would not coincide with that. For it, the industry may warrant the term ‘athletics gear manufacturing industry’ even if it produces one nature or line of the above goods (Freeman, 2005). The second area of consideration that may bring in the concept of holism and reductionism with respect to the industry is production process of the apparel. If the principles holism is considered, an all-inclusive design perspective is used. As such, the criteria for producing athletics apparel might be the same. The price determination criteria (Wu, 2012) for the same system of items (protective athletics items for instance) might be the same. More so, the raw materials might also be the same for a system of items so that similar items can match in many, if not all aspects. Holism as far as this industry is considered is a considerable notion that all things, methodology of their production and price processing are connected in such a mutual manner that none is stand-alone (Benci et al., 2003).

If reductionism concept is used, however, the contrary of the above among other things is possible. In reductionism, the manner of treating even a system of related goods in terms of pricing criteria, production process, branding and other levels of good handling might not be equal. Since reductionist believes every part of the system is a stand-alone facet, every unit of the production process in the manufacturing process of the athletics apparel will be treated independently. As such, every item that will be produced might possess different attributes from the other even though the same department produces the items. In that case, every item deserves its own handling since quality might not be the same. In short, reductionism when applied in any manufacturing industry or production process means that every bit of the process is independent of the preceding or succeeding stages.