For education both the RN and RRT take two years or longer with prerequisites that are required before acceptance. But for both the 4 year degree is recommended for advancement into specialty areas. RT is also petitioning for enhanced reimbursement in other areas for practitioners with the 4 year or higher degree.
Doing a specialty career is not for everyone and if you can not come up with one good reason why you want to specialize in cardiopulmonary, then consider nursing where you do have more opportunity to hop around. If you consider teaching and giving nebulizers treatments boring, then please go to nurse "dude" (in reference to Jeremy's post) as RT will have little use for you in it.
If you want to see the full potential of an RRT especially in your state, visit the department at Arkansas Childrens.
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