Elizabeth Röhrs

Elizabeth joined the Respiratory Therapy department at Royal Columbian Hospital in 2009 and has worked extensively proving mechanical ventilation management to both neonatal and adult patients. Her passion for research emerged in 2010 when she presented a poster at the American Association of Respiratory Care on the first neonatal patient in Canada managed using high frequency oscillation with volume guarantee. This passion grew when she became involved with developing a long term, preclinical ventilation model used to study mechanical ventilation in pigs to better inform and improve its delivery in human patients. Elizabeth pursued a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University with a focus on using new technology to prevent ventilator-induced lung injury in patients who are critically ill. Her dissertation was titled “Negative Pressure-Assisted Ventilation Reduces Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury” and was awarded her doctorate degree. She has co-authored 22 research papers and presented 47 abstracts at conferences during her Ph.D. and has become an expert in respiratory physiology and the delivery of mechanical ventilation to critically ill patients. Elizabeth completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Sorbonne University in France where she participated in the feasibility study of using phrenic nerve pacing to reduce ventilator-induced lung injury in patients with ARDS. She is currently working as the Academic Research Lead for the Advancing Innovation in Medicine Research Institute at the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation where she helps to foster research capacity and facilitate clinical-academic research partnerships at the Royal Columbian Hospital. She also still maintains a clinical respiratory therapy position as well. Elizabeth is one of the first respiratory therapists to achieve a Ph.D. in British Columbia and one of seven in Canada. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy, where she helps to build research knowledge within the respiratory therapy community nationally and internationally.