Is the AA profession gaining ground?

.... I am an AA who can do everything that a CRNA does (except bill for my services) and I was trained in 2 years.......

Patently false, sir ... unless one counts 'everything that a CRNA does' as only those few poor brow-beaten and dumbed-down CRNAs whom your notorious boss hires for his group after telling them at interview, "Lines? Blocks? No way! Forget that. You'll not be doing any of that here."

It's all derived from A$A policy: no 'nurse' will do blocks or lines, nor will they practice with any significant degree of autonomy. Big difference between those restrictions, and 'everything that a CRNA does' in my book.

Your boss won't let you do blocks or lines or practice autonomously either, will he? A falsehood, in other words -- a lie.

Why?

Once again the two AAs are straining on this NURSES BB to receive validation. Fact is, all the bragging in the world will never convince us that AAs are equal to CRNAs, fellas ... except perhaps the naive wannabees and the newbies who know no better. Experientia docet. We who've been around the block, and around the world in anesthesia, we know better.

I'm reminded of Aesop's fable of the blind men describing a elephant. Having spent too long in Atlanta, these two think all the US resembles Atlanta, instead of being the quite singular anomaly that Atlanta is. They should get out more. (Incidentally, they could benefit from making fewer 'you' statements and more 'I' statements in their dialog. Comes across as whiny.)

Are AAs gaining ground? Sure. By my rough calculations, if five schools can graduate 30 grads each year, in roughly 220 years, AAs might catch up to the number of CRNAs extant in 2006.

So ... never mind.

....yawn....


deepz

.....and I'm willing to bet that you have never even met an AA much less seen one working in the OR.

New AA grads are brought along slowly in the ACT environment. Easy cases to start, lots of direct supervision. Over time, they become more independant and gravitate to the bigger more complex cases. Just like the mentoring that you got as a greenhorn.

Bull. I have, in fact quite often.

You might not want to hear this story, but here goes. BTW, I'm sure everyone has a story of incompetant providers, so here is mine. Rotating somewhere in Georgia. Me a junior SRNA (didactic work of 7 months, clinical 7 months) and a senior AA are at the same facility. Keep in mind she graduates in the Spring and will most likely take boards before graduation. Head MD says "quiz time" in front of a room full of anesthesia providers, mostly CRNAs, a couple AAs. I'm thinking she's had all this science background and I'm gonna get killed here.
First question to the AA (senior) student - "What is anectine?"
Her answer: "A non-depolarizing NMB".
The two staff AAs get up and leave at this point, along with several CRNAs. Other staff settle in because they just wanna hear this I guess.
I'll spare you the details of the rest of the conversation and I'm not giving out location information because that isn't the point of the conversation.
She didn't know what populations you can and can't give anectine to, much less what is was, nor did she know much else about the muscle relaxants or volatiles for the matter. MD basically told her not to come to clinical until she could at least answer these questions. Not to brag, but it is sad when a junior SRNA cleans a senior AAs clock during a pimping session in front of an audience.
I'm going to take a couple of arguements away right now. This information was not the type of information that comes with recently reading something and repeating it, say some obscure fact or study. This was what should be basic provider knowledge. Someboy's probably gonna give a million stupid SRNA stories and mistakes here and that's a part of learning. Everybody did them, including the clinical studs here on this board when they were learining. No senior should be publically embarassed like that by a junior on basic provider knowledge.
You can believe this story or not, really doesn't matter to me. This was in fact my first encounter with AAs. Then I met some more in clinical settings where I was actually in the room with them.

So there goes your arguement about not knowing much about your profession and not ever working with one.

Do AA students ever have a room solo with a supervising MD?
How many cases do AAs typically graduate with?

Nope - that's called billing and/or Medicare fraud. I hear it happens frequently in "other programs".

Can you explain the medicare fraud allegations. Though the supervision ratio for SRNA's/residents and even AA's was 2 students : 1 attending.

I think for AA students, they have to be 1:1 with another provider...since they do not have a license to administer meds while they are training (as SRNAs do with their RN license). I could be wrong though.