RET3493L is the laboratory accompanying RET3493, the cardiopulmonary assessment course. It is a one-credit course in which the assessment skills taught in lecture are performed, observed and assessed.
UWF describes it as a "lab-based course [that] reinforces the role of the respiratory care practitioner throughout a cardiopulmonary assessment," with emphasis on "correct clinical skills that support a complete patient examination." Activities include the assessment of medical records, physical findings, laboratory data, pulmonary function tests, medical images and haemodynamic monitoring data.
The distinction from the lecture is the usual one and it is sharper here than in most laboratories. The lecture teaches what a finding means; the laboratory establishes that you can elicit it. Recognising crackles in a recording is a different skill from hearing them through a stethoscope on a real chest wall, in a noisy room, on a patient who is breathing shallowly. Percussion, palpation and systematic auscultation are physical techniques with a technique-dependent yield, and they are learned by doing them repeatedly under correction.
⚠ This course and RET3493 are reciprocal corequisites: neither can be taken alone. You register for both, for four credits between them, and receive two grades.
Two Florida public institutions carry this number: the University of West Florida and Florida A&M University, both at one credit.
⚠ A one-credit laboratory within a professional sequence does not have a career pathway of its own; the destination is the programme's. In brief:
⚠⚠ The specific contribution of this laboratory is the physical examination skill, and it is worth naming because it is the part of respiratory care least replaceable by technology. Monitors produce numbers; the therapist produces the observation that tells you what the numbers mean. Preceptors notice immediately which students can examine a chest properly, and it shapes how much independence they are given in clinical.
| Institution | Its title | Credits | Contact hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of West Florida (SUS) | Patient Assessment Lab | 1 | not published |
| Florida A&M University (SUS) | ⚠ Health Assessments and Interventions | 1 | not published |
Both carriers award one credit. ⚠ Florida's statewide record gives this laboratory the same title as its lecture — Respiratory Disease Assessment — with no separate description, so the state record cannot distinguish the two halves. Both institutions do in their own catalogues.
⚠ Note FAMU uses the same title for both its lecture and its laboratory ("Health Assessments and Interventions"), so within FAMU's catalogue the two are told apart by number and credit value rather than by name. Register by number. FAMU's catalogue was not reachable when this guide was written, so the detail above is from UWF's description and the statewide record.
The 30 contact hours recorded here is derived: a one-credit laboratory in Florida conventionally carries two to three contact hours a week, so roughly 30 to 45 hours across a term. Neither carrier publishes a figure; 30 is the lower end of that convention.
Students plan around credits and are caught by hours. A one-credit laboratory occupies the same weekly block as a three-credit lecture, and a skills course additionally requires practice outside the session, because competencies are assessed on performance rather than attendance.
⚠ Budget for it as a three-credit course. Find out in the first week whether the laboratory is open for practice outside scheduled hours — auscultation and percussion in particular reward repetition more than study.
UWF lists RET3493 as a corequisite of this laboratory, and the laboratory as a corequisite of RET3493 — enforced in both directions.
Assessment laboratories are taught by students examining one another, because a chest wall is not readily simulated. That is standard, necessary and pedagogically sound, and it has implications students should know in advance rather than discover in the session.
Worth flagging because it surprises students. Spirometry is coaching, not button-pressing. An acceptable manoeuvre requires maximal effort, a sharp start, no cough in the first second, and continued exhalation well past the point at which people naturally stop — and getting that from a real person requires loud, active, slightly theatrical coaching that most students find uncomfortable at first.
⚠ The quality criteria are examinable and clinically consequential: an unacceptable manoeuvre produces a number that looks like data and is not. Learning to reject your own poor efforts is part of the skill.
CoARC accredits respiratory care programmes as programmes — separately as entry into professional practice and as degree advancement for already-credentialed therapists. ⚠⚠ Eligibility to sit the NBRC credentialing examinations runs through completing an appropriate accredited programme, not through accumulating transferable credit. Confirm your programme's CoARC status and type, and verify current requirements with CoARC, the NBRC and the Florida Board of Respiratory Care directly.
Taken with RET3493 in the first professional term, normally alongside RET3028/RET3028L and the first clinical practicum RET3884. The competencies established here are re-assessed in every clinical rotation.
⚠ A 3000-level course carrying upper-division credit. The statewide record classifies it as transferable to an institution offering the same course, with no Gordon Rule designation and no general-education category. It is marked for dual enrolment with elective high-school credit — ⚠ but every active RET number carries that identical marking, so it is prefix-wide boilerplate.
⚠⚠ Competency-based laboratories transfer awkwardly. A receiving programme may accept the credit and still require its own laboratory, because it must attest to your competencies for accreditation purposes. Keep your competency checklist and syllabus, and get any evaluation in writing.
⚠⚠ This laboratory teaches the part of clinical assessment that no tool performs. Percussion, palpation, auscultation and the coaching of a spirometry manoeuvre are physical skills executed on a person, assessed by observation. Nothing is generated, and there is no shortcut to the hands or the ear.
That is worth stating positively rather than as a caution, because it identifies where the durable value of this profession sits. Monitoring and interpretation are being automated steadily; examining a patient is not. A therapist who can examine a chest well is doing the thing the algorithms depend on and cannot do — producing the observation against which the numbers are checked.
Where these tools help, narrowly and genuinely: rehearsing the sequence of an examination before a session, having a mechanism re-explained (why a pleural effusion dulls percussion, why crackles open late in inspiration), and generating practice cases to reason through. Auscultation itself is best practised with real recordings and real chests.
⚠ The caution specific to this laboratory concerns interpretation rather than technique. A model asked what a finding means will answer confidently and without the patient — no history, no trend, no appearance — which are exactly the things that determine significance. Reference values and quality criteria are also revised periodically, and a generated answer carries no indication of which edition it reflects. Verify against the AARC Clinical Practice Guidelines, ATS/ERS standards and your programme's checklists.
⚠⚠ And one habit worth forming here, because it is the professional standard for automation generally: when an instrument's output disagrees with your own examination, that is a reason to look harder at both — not to defer to the instrument. Oximetry misleads in specific, knowable circumstances; spirometry produces confident numbers from unacceptable efforts. The person who checks is the therapist, and the checking habit is built in a laboratory like this one.
Generated September 15, 2026 · Updated September 15, 2026