Your respiratory rate is your number of breaths per minute. The standard way for this to be measured is by a nurse looking at you for one minute and manually counting your breaths over this time. They normally do this once every few hours. At times, it can be useful to have your respiratory rate continuously monitored. A device that can do this is a capnograph. For the patient, this involves wearing a tube in their nose and around their ears while trying to minimise their movement and talking so the measurements can be taken.