Could someone please explain...

Well, tell me what your role encompasses and then I will tell you. I know roughly what a NNP does, but not on a day-to-day basis. And how large of a salary discrepancy are we talking? 10% more? 50% more? 100% more?

What is the salary range for NPs where you are? What degree do you hold?

I would think a lot of the salary issues have to do with supply and demand (among other things). As a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner I'm sure you are caring for more than one neonate at a time (perhaps you are covering a whole unit), whereas CRNA's have one patient at a time and one patient only. Therefore, our numbers are in much higher demand. And considering the vast number of surgeries that are performed everyday in the US, the number of CRNA's needed continues to grow, especially at rural hospitals where we are the main anesthesia provider. Other things that come to mind would be length and intensity of the training that is required of CRNA's and the responsbility that comes along with the job. Hope this helps a little bit.

Salaries are sometimes dictated by supply and demand and market forces, not necessarily what the roles entail.

edit. I see turtle made the point at the same time I did.

I know it mainly has to do with supply and demand, but we also have a very strong national organization that has fought for our career since the beginning. We also started out and remain independent, even though that gets confused by those who don't know our field.

I agree with the above posts about market forces and a VERY stong professional organization. I would like to add to those by saying that we are the only area of medicine where a doctor and nurse can do the same thing and get paid the same money. The reason for that is, our understanding of the VALUE of administering anesthesia and how that value translates into income and reimbusement. The value of administering anesthesia is a calculated monetary number based on the difficulty of performing anesthesia for a particular procedure, plus time and multiplied by a predetermined figure.

That is a round about way of saying that we get paid what we are worth, as determined by the difficulty of the procedure.

I believe our education is much longer and much more intense with emphasis on hard sciences.

The good news, we are very self-sufficient, hard workers and work in difficult surroundings.

Earnings are rarely fair. It is hard for me to see how a marginally talented , not very bright professional football player can command so much money for the little they do.

yoga

Nurse anesthetists education and practice is more of the medical model rather than the nursing model.