Mother-Daughter RTs: Candy Spurling and Kaitlin Barnes

When Candy Spurling, MEd, BSRC, RRT, RRT-ACCS, became a single mother of a three-year-old and a five-month-old in 1995, she knew she needed a career that would pay the bills and provide a good future for her children.

“I was on government assistance and taking a paralegal certificate program when they administered an aptitude test and told me I should enroll in college and earn a degree,” she said.

Spurling took the advice and was accepted to Washington State Community College in Marietta, OH, where she planned to enter the medical laboratory technology (MLT) program until her advisor suggested she look into the new respiratory care program launching at the college instead.

“She urged me to call local hospitals and compare job opportunities because she knew I was a single mom and did not want me to earn a degree in a program that I would not be able to find a job in,” explained Spurling. “The turnover rate for MLT wasn’t very high, but when I asked about respiratory jobs, all three hospitals in my area were in need. That’s how I became a respiratory therapist.”

From the bedside to the classroom

Picture of Kaitlin as a child: Kaitlin Barnes enjoyed dressing up in her mom’s cap and gown when she graduated from RT school back in 1998.

Spurling graduated in 1998 and spent the next 22 years working in the hospital setting, first on the floors and in the emergency department at her small hometown hospital, then at a trauma/teaching center as a core RT in the MICU. From there, she did a stint in the CVICU — the place she calls her “respiratory love” — and then in 2014 became an adult ECMO specialist.

Throughout most of it, she worked the night shift so she could focus on her kids during the day, and she says she loved the closeness she developed with her night-shift family.

She earned her BSRC in 2020, and when the opportunity to move into the educational arena arose shortly thereafter, she took it. While she admits she hated the timing — “I never want my colleagues to think I dipped out during a worldwide pandemic,” she said — it was just too good an opportunity to turn down.

“As the years ticked by at the bedside, I was considered a ‘senior’ therapist and enjoyed teaching new therapists as well as nursing staff along the way,” explained Spurling. “The appeal of still helping patients through teaching and sharing my experience with future therapists, while also improving students’ financial lives, sounded like a fulfilling career change.”

Education proved to be the right place for her, and she went on to earn her master’s degree to solidify that career path. She credits her colleagues at Chattanooga State Community College for helping her along the way. “Strong, supportive, educated women surround me, and I saw an opportunity not only to join them, but also to become a stronger support and educator for my students,” said Spurling, who now serves as an assistant professor and director of clinical education at the school.

Out of the blue

Everything was going to plan for Spurling, but the one thing she never saw coming was her daughter’s decision to join her in the respiratory care profession. That’s exactly what happened this past spring, when Kaitlin Barnes, RRT, graduated from the Chatt State respiratory care program and went to work as a pediatric therapist at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger.

“I was stunned!” said Spurling of her daughter’s decision to pursue the degree. “At one point in her late teens/early 20s, I thought she was a hypochondriac — if anyone near her was sick, she’d panic and start to hyperventilate.”

After graduating from high school, she says her daughter tried college, but it just wasn’t for her at that point in her life. She ended up working in the service industry instead, but by her late 20s, she decided—like her mom before her—it was time to find a more stable and lucrative career.

She enrolled at Chatt State, first planning to major in radiology technology, but quickly switched to respiratory care, where one of her instructors was, of course, her own mother.

Learning to love it

Barnes says she was just as surprised at her decision as her mother was.

“Honestly, I didn’t really understand what my mom did when I was little,” she explained. “I knew she worked at the hospital, wore scrubs, and came home tired.”

She knew her mom helped people breathe, but as a kid who found breathing easy, she didn’t really know what that meant. “To me, she just went to work and came home in ‘dirty scrubs,’” she said. “I wasn’t sitting around as a kid thinking, ‘Wow, mom’s job looks awesome. Sign me up.’”

But once she was in RT school, she began to see what the fuss was all about, and she loved that the profession combines medicine, critical thinking, and direct patient care. “I liked that you have to be able to think on your feet and that what you do can make a really immediate difference,” she said.

Barnes remembers her mother being excited about her choice — but not without a few reservations. “She was worried I wouldn’t like it,” said Barnes. “I had never really shown much interest in respiratory, so I think she was probably thinking, ‘Are we sure about this?’”

She got to see a different side of her mother too, as she assumed the role of just one more student in class, having to raise her hand to be called on by “Candy” instead of “mom.”

Mom took it all in stride. “She supported me throughout the whole program without making me feel like I had to live up to her career,” said Barnes. “She let me become my own therapist, which I really appreciated.”

Having her mom as one of her instructors helped, though — Barnes says she was always there when she didn’t understand something, and she was also good at telling the difference between someone who was truly confused and someone who was just tired and looking for the answer.

“Also, no, I wasn’t her favorite student, for those curious,” she added.

Right for her

Working on the pediatric side of the profession is a departure from her mom’s career — Spurling specialized in adults at the bedside — but Barnes says it’s the right place for her. While it can be challenging taking care of kids who are sometimes very ill, she says she loves being able to help them and their families when they are going through tough and often scary times.

Other times, the job is just fun.

“I get to play with them between rounds, interact with them, and sometimes I get to hold babies at work,” she said. “There are worse ways to spend a shift.”

Her goals for the future are to continue growing in neonatal and pediatric critical care and hopefully to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become an ECMO specialist, only in her case, on the pediatric side.

“I never expected this to be the path I ended up on, but now that I’m here, I really can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said.

Lots of bonding moments

Both mother and daughter say working in the same profession has brought them closer.

“I like the fact she can call me and vent, or ask questions, and I understand completely, having worked with some of the same people in different capacities and knowing the pulse of the facility, since she works at the same trauma/teaching hospital except on the children’s side,” said Spurling. “I love learning from her at the same time. Never having worked with peds/neo patients, I learn new things often.”

Barnes says the experience has given them another thing to bond over, and she loves having someone in her corner who understands the job without her having to explain every little thing.

The fact that they’ve gone down slightly different paths—her mom working with adults and now teaching, and she specializing in kids—makes it interesting too. “She’ll tell me something about an adult cardiac patient, and I’ll be like, ‘Well, today I held a baby,’ so we’re not always having the same kind of respiratory experience,” she said.

In the end, though, she marvels at how far she’s gone since she was the child of a respiratory therapist.

“Honestly, I think the funniest part is that I went from being the kid who didn’t want to touch anything at the hospital to being the adult who voluntarily walks into one every day,” said Barnes. “I guess mom’s career rubbed off on me whether I knew it or not.”