Is the AA profession gaining ground?

That's fine - You're free to impose your own standards on yourself and YOUR profession. Why on earth do you think it's reasonable to impose your standards on MY profession? And have you even read the standards for my profession? They're available in the public domain, unlike the standards for CRNA programs which are hidden behind the firewall and members-only section of the AANA website. Why is that?

And BTW, those "standards" for CRNA's are a relatively new thing in the long history of CRNA's, both the one for a BSN and the year of critical care experience. And oh, I just love this, right there at the very top of the CRNA section of allnurses.com :

Education: While 37 percent of the nurse anesthetists received their nurse anesthetist educational preparation through a master’s program, 58 percent received their educational preparation through a post-RN certificate.

Like Sgt. Joe Friday - just the facts ma'am.



That's not negative? Hmmmmm

It is true of the post-RN certificates but the profession has taken significant strides to advance the education and status. A friend of mines dad is a CRNA of 35yrs. Claims back in the day CRNA's made squat and that the profession has and is changing rapidly. Its crazy some of this stuff they used to do when he first got out. Listen both professions I would bet have fairly equal didactic education. Or they should at least. What is called into question is not the didactic education but the lack of clinical experience and hands on pt care before you are pushing dangerous drugs and shoving tubes and lines in people, and making critical descisions. You can make the aurgument that most AA's have some sort of clinical experience which yes was prob true 10yrs ago but as programs expand more people with non hlth care, no science degrees are entering your profession. As I claimed I have met AA students online with elementary ed, civil engineering and psychology undergrad degrees. And taking Organic, Bio chem, which i took or calc doesnt make up for this lack of experience or exposure to actually pt problems.

Yeah the first RN's that put people to sleep using drip ether methods for DR. Mayo werent masters prepared. Nor where the catholic nuns that went to europe in WWI to anesthetize ours and french soldiers at military bases. Masters prepared nurses prob didnt even exist when Alice freaking McGaw had already put 14,000 pts to sleep with drip ether in the early 1900's, Nor did they when Hodgins put over 10,000 pts to sleep using N2O, Ether tech.
So they werent masters prepared and many still arent and it doesnt seem to be effecting the level of care at present. If the study you cite is true of there being no difference b/t the 2 in that Ohio practice Im sure at least a few of those CRNA's to make the comparisson to AA's were merely post grads certificates. A title sometimes can be just that.

The study in Cleveland covered about 45,000 cases - every case done that involved any AA or CRNA in their hospital system for 2-3 years. CWRU has both an AA and CRNA program, so it makes an excellent comparison between the two professions.

Like I said - the BSN (or other degree) and critical care requirement is recent history, not Florence Nightingale. Early to mid 90's. And even those requirements are open to interpretation and flexibility at the individual program level. According to the AANA website, the requirement is BSN or "other appropriate baccalaureate degree". So it doesn't actually have to be a BSN. It could be an associates degree RN that has finished their bachelor's degree in a field other than nursing.

And it's not actually a critical care requirement - it's "acute care". For some it's true ICU experience. Others it's ER, or NICU, or even PACU. And although many nurse anesthesia students have a lot of experience, many do not. I know several who have been accepted into their programs at a point where they had only three months of experience, and it was just assumed that they'd have that full year in by the time they started anesthesia school.

You think the experience is necessary - we don't. It helps, granted, but it's not a requirement. We would rather have the student with the requisite knowledge of the sciences - after all, anesthesiology is a science. And we're talking hard science, not the freshman level survey chemistry courses I've seen described as being taken in various threads on this website. Calculus Physics, not intro to physics. Organic. Biochem. Sure, some nurse anesthesia students have these. I would guess most do not. Why? Because things like organic and biochem and calc physics are hard to cram into a BSN program with all those nursing classes. The college major really doesn't matter - if you don't have the requisite science classes, you're not getting in a program. There are plenty of psych, education, and business, and lets not forget, even a few nursing majors getting into medical school as well, but there's not one that gets in without a broad foundation in hard science. And of course a nursing degree has never been a requirement for medical school - why should it be for anesthesia school?

Z, sorry we're boring you - go back to sleep.

So they werent masters prepared and many still arent and it doesnt seem to be effecting the level of care at present.

....What is called into question is not the didactic education but the lack of clinical experience and hands on pt care before you are pushing dangerous drugs and shoving tubes and lines in people, and making critical descisions........

As is often said, the first two years of an anusthesiolgy residency are largely spent trying to teach the doctors to act like nurses.


.

I have read all of the AA/CRNA debate threads with great interest as I will soon be entering anesthesia school and ultimately the profession of anesthesia. The big debate seems to be preparation and experience prior to entering anesthesia school whether CRNA or AA. I do not know how to not take the AAs' comments as insults. Are they saying that the nurses on this forum and the nurses that they hand their pt's over to in the ICU and PACU know nothing? Do you really believe that you learn everything that a CRNA does in two years? The CRNA has a minimum of 6 years of focused education learning how to care for pts. (excludes the requisite acute care experience) AA's have 2. And to address one more recurrent theme... AA students may have experience prior to entering AA school. The CRNA student must have experience. Maybe I am missing something in the AAs' arguments ...........................JMHO

Do you really believe that you learn everything that a CRNA does in two years?