Is the AA profession gaining ground?

This board allows anyone to establish pseudo-credibility and play with the big dogs. Truth is you have no hands-on anesthesia credibility. Your just a know-it-all first year student, typical of most programs. Not saying you are wrong, just saying you don't count.

So you have dealt with AAs as a unit RN. Congratulations. I have dealt with them as an anesthesia provider and I see the big picture. I have been in the trenches with the AAs. I see how f'ed up Georgia is. I worked at Memorial in Savannah. Their PACU has the mentality of a battleground due to the conflicts between CRNAs and AAs.

Get back to reading Physiology. Come back here when you have a 1,000 cases under your belt.

This board allows anyone to establish pseudo-credibility and play with the big dogs. Truth is you have no hands-on anesthesia credibility. Your just a know-it-all first year student, typical of most programs. Not saying you are wrong, just saying you don't count.

You get no argument from me on this. I have stated numerous times that the CRNA right out of school probably has an advantage over the new AA grad. But after 5 years you would not be able to tell them apart.

The real question is whether it's good public policy to take the chance with a less experienced AA over those five years, even if complications only arise in one percent of cases.

Everybody is going to have individual stories about bad AA's or bad CRNA's, etc. And even if more studies were done comparing the two, there would always be arguments over bias, flaws, etc.

It's really a question of risk and the best way to minimize that risk. I don't think there's any question that the CRNA critical care requirements, while not foolproof, do go long way toward minimizing that risk. It's got to be better than an AA program with no critical care pre-requisites at all.

If AA's want more credibility they should start requiring critical care in their programs, just like CRNA's do. And they should probably disallow liberal arts majors and such which, even though they are small in number does cause, at the very least, a perception problem regarding their abilities.

I'd rather hear from the "know-it-all-first-year-student" than the not-EVEN-been-accepted-to-a-program-but-somehow-still-manage-to-know-it-all. That's just me though.

Where did you get the statistic that complications are occuring in 1% of AA cases???? That is an outrageous fabrication. Where is your data to support the notion that the public is at risk?? It is a fact that AAs are as safe as CRNAs. If you read the rest of my post, I said that the brand new AA is a little more closely supervised by the MDA and is doing the more basic cases right at first - no one is at risk and to allege that they are is pure unsubstantiated crapola. They ramp up quickly to being more independant and doing more difficult cases over the first year as they grow more comfortable and experienced.

Also, we don't feel like we lack credibility at all. Amongst those that matter, our patients, the ASA, and the CRNAs that we work with our credibility is fine. It's only the CRNAs that don't know us, or don't want to know us that we lack credibility and to be honest with you - that's more your problem than ours.

However, its the 1% of cases that you train for.

I'm with rayman. 3 threads on AAs isn't necessary. At least close 2 of them down.

Am I to assume you are referring to me by that statement?

Where did you get the statistic that complications are occuring in 1% of AA cases???? That is an outrageous fabrication. Where is your data to support the notion that the public is at risk?? It is a fact that AAs are as safe as CRNAs. If you read the rest of my post, I said that the brand new AA is a little more closely supervised by the MDA and is doing the more basic cases right at first - no one is at risk and to allege that they are is pure unsubstantiated crapola. They ramp up quickly to being more independant and doing more difficult cases over the first year as they grow more comfortable and experienced.

Also, we don't feel like we lack credibility at all. Amongst those that matter, our patients, the ASA, and the CRNAs that we work with our credibility is fine. It's only the CRNAs that don't know us, or don't want to know us that we lack credibility and to be honest with you - that's more your problem than ours.