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For Martin Valdes, MD, RRT, the path to become a physician would take him to a heart failure intensive care unit as a respiratory therapist and through a hurricane.

His journey began in Eagle Pass, Texas, where he grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor. As an undergraduate biochemistry major at The University of Texas at San Antonio, Valdes attended a health professions career fair and learned about respiratory therapy. He liked what he heard and figured his application to medical school would be strengthened by becoming an expert on the airway. The ability to enter an in-demand health profession upon receiving his bachelor’s degree was just as appealing. The decision to apply to the Bachelor of Science in Respiratory Care program at UT �鶹��ý��Դ was easy, he said.

“I always wanted to pursue medicine,” Valdes said. “The selling point for me was that it’s a good stepping stone — this gives you bedside experience, clinical experience and teaches you to be part of a team.”

Valdes graduated in 2016 and spent a year working nights in the heart failure intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. He didn’t want to wait any longer to pursue his dream of becoming a doctor and applied to Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica.

“Two weeks into my stint, Hurricane Maria comes and destroys the whole school. We got evacuated and everything,” he said.

The medical school offered students the opportunity to continue their studies aboard a cruise ship docked off the island of St. Kitts. Valdes completed more than three months of medical school on the ship, before heading to Knoxville, Tenn., where the medical school obtained space from another university and where Valdes finished his basic science courses before heading to Michigan for his clinical rotations.

“Talk about getting your sea legs,” he said. 

Now in his first of three years as a pulmonary and critical care fellow at UT �鶹��ý��Դ, Valdes says his time as a respiratory therapist taught him a lot and helped him when he was applying for residencies and fellowships.

“It prepares you clinically, how to interact with a team, how to interact with other health care providers — and how to be humble, too,” he said.

His experience in respiratory therapy also was instrumental in his choice of specialty. 

“It’s like doing pulmonary and critical care without the medical degree,” he said. “You learn how to manage ventilation, you learn the respiratory physiology, you learn the pulmonary function tests.”

“If it wasn’t for RT, I wouldn’t have done pulmonary/critical care and been exposed to the field,” he said.