Does anyone ever wonder what will happen when the market becomes flooded with CRNAs? Will we see a drop in salaries?
I am a SRNA and today I heard one of my program heads discuss with one of the anesthesia attendings about anesthesiology and where it will be in the future and the attending mentioned that anesthesia residency programs will, in the next year, begin their expansion into more of the perioperative arena and carve out a niche in this area. He said in the future MDAs will spend a lot of time in the SICU and will be trained to become heads of this units and CRNAs will deliver almost, if not all, anesthesia. He also said the market will not sustain paying 350K to an MDA to "push propofol".
That's all fine and dandy with me and it was great to hear the future looks good for us.
What surprised me, however, was to hear my program head say that more and more CRNAs, as well as PAs, will be put into the work force to the point that the market will be saturated. She said right now CRNAs make great money because of the shortage but with supply of providers increasing the market, will again, push our salaries down and more to the level of NPs.
Needless to say, I was not too optimistic about that comment and wonder if that will ever be an issue I need to worry about. She also stated the market will not bear paying 120-150K to us to just push fluids. I really didn't know what to think at that point and thought this lady was full of crappola.
Any comments?