Your brain controls your breathing and will do so automatically (without conscious order). This means you will continue to breathe even when you are not thinking about breathing, such as when you are asleep.

However, breathing can also be under the conscious (voluntary) control of the brain.

You can breathe faster, breathe deeper, breathe shallower, or breathe slower if you want to do so. You can even stop breathing altogether, at least for a short time. Thus, you can swim underwater and you can hold your breath while putting on your protective mask during a chemical attack.

Unfortunately, this voluntary control of breathing can create a problem when you are assessing the patient’s breathing rate and quality.

If the patient knows that you are paying attention to his breathing, then he will probably start paying attention to his breathing also. In doing so, his brain switches from automatic control of breathing (which you want to observe) to voluntary control (which does not give you a true picture of his normal breathing).

In order to get a true picture of the patient’s breathing rate and quality, the patient should be at rest (lying down) and should not beware that you are observing his breathing process.