[LLL123]

I work in a large academic medial center in the SICU. I am also interviewing next week for anesthesia school!!! (this is a whole other discussion!! ) Today while at work one of the anesthesia residents came to preop one of my patients for tracheostomy surgery in the morning. As I was chit chatting with him about anesthesia school the resident for my patient's primary team came over and joined our conversation. The surgical resident has made comments to me about calling anesthetists "NINJAS". I asked him about this one day and he said because they are "silent asassins". As we were joking today I told the anesthesia resident about this "nick" and the surgery resident said that only applied to CRNA's not MDA's. The anesthesia resident in turn made several ugly remarks about CRNA's and their incompetence. This infuriated me! I (very nicely) pointed out to them that there is incompetence in every field, MD's included! I have been reading in these forums about the struggle for power between these two groups of professionals, but have yet to witness any of it untill today. I just don't understand why MD's have such a problem with the practice of CRNA's!
Any one have any "reasonable" ideas?

[Nitecap]

Its all about money and power as is with most disagreements and aurguments. Do more research on the subject here or studentdoctor.net anesthesiology forum. Studying right now and just cant start a forum war of words right now. Research within these 2 forums as well as aana.com and ASA website should give you more insight. You should really understand these things before you enter the profession. It just blows my mind how many srna's have no clue what is going down in the profession. Good luck.

[SeekingNur]

Looks a lot like the attitude many OBGYNs have toward midwives. Money and power indeed. Ego too.

[MistaV]

I'm a student finishing up my BSN and I am a little bit concerned about the things I've heard. Quite frankly, I think I'm just as intelligent as any pre-med student in undergrad and if my mommy and daddy drove BMWs and Jaguars, I'm sure I would be one of them too. But we're all not born with a silver spoon in our mouths are we? Anyways, I see it as a law of supply and demand. Why can't a CRNA provide just as great anesthesia as an MDA? At a reasonable cost for the patient at that. So I ask you, starter of this thread, what can the CRNAs, SRNAs, and future SRNAs do now and later to help? And this really concerns me since I attend undergrad in Florida and would like to stay in FLA for MSN (anesthesia) too!

[TexasCCRN]

Originally Posted by Lionheart

I'm a student finishing up my BSN and I am a little bit concerned about the things I've heard. Quite frankly, I think I'm just as intelligent as any pre-med student in undergrad and if my mommy and daddy drove BMWs and Jaguars, I'm sure I would be one of them too. But we're all not born with a silver spoon in our mouths are we? Anyways, I see it as a law of supply and demand. Why can't a CRNA provide just as great anesthesia as an MDA? At a reasonable cost for the patient at that. So I ask you, starter of this thread, what can the CRNAs, SRNAs, and future SRNAs do now and later to help? And this really concerns me since I attend undergrad in Florida and would like to stay in FLA for MSN (anesthesia) too!

As someone said earlier it's all about money, power, politics. If CRNA's were incompetent then we would have been gone a long time ago. If they would just study up they would realize that CRNA's were around before MDA's and we did a fine job. The only reason they got into it was for the $$$.
You are right most of us are as intelligent, if not more than any MD around. Just because you have MD behind your name doesn't mean your IQ is higher than everyone around you (you wouldn't know this from the attitude sometimes). Grant you this attitude is from residents mostly who don't know what's going on anyway, they are young, smart, arrogant, etc. Most MD's realize that we are a team and are respectful.

What can we do to help. Support the AANA (they fight for us). Read, study and research some more...find out what's going on and determine what you believe about things. Just remember to be respectful at all times to everyone. I think CRNA's get a bad name because a few want to compare their education that that of an MD. Wouldn't you get aggrivated if you went to school forever and someone just discounted it. It's just like when some nurses tell CRNA's you are "just a nurse". It's an insult to all the hard work you've done. With that said don't let anyone make you think that CRNA's are any less functionally than an MDA. We do the same thing and we do it quite well. Just because we haven't done an internal med rotation, peds rotation,etc. We were just focused on one thing ANESTHESIA!

[LLL123]

I am definitely going to do more research on this topic and try to understand where both sides are coming from. Since nurse anesthesia is my career goal I find it very important to gain as much knowledge as I can about political issues and where the profession stands. I am sure that the more involved I become in anesthesia I will witness more of these kinds of uneducated attitudes about CRNA's.

[Dayray]

Physicians aren’t necessarily against advanced practice nursing but they do want to keep nurses "in their place". Most MD's see nurses as below them in education, practice, skill and status. The fact that advanced practice nursing services rival and in many cases exceed, the quality of medical services makes them angry.

Right now medicine greatly overshadows nursing. Physicians make more money and have the confidence of the public behind them. However as advanced practice nursing becomes more common and more excepted we as nurses are closing in on their turf.

I see doctors being defensive and trying to diminish NP’s all the time. I guess it's to be expected. They spent allot of time and money to get to a status that our society places above everyone else and now that status is threatened by competent nurses (a class that is supposed to be far below them).

If nurses were to band together like physicians we would wield a great power over the future of healthcare. Doctors are slowly becoming aware of this and it is starting to create an adversarial relationship. The trouble is that because of this attitude doctors are making oppressive polices on the practice of NP's. They can't write the laws effecting nurses but they do make physician specific polices that say they have to be in charge of a nurse they work with.

Most nurses including the one's in advanced practice aren't as interested in power and status as physicians. Because of this many in advanced practice are caught off guard by physicians attitudes. Still it is something that is going to become even more of an issue as nurses become more educated, prevalent, trusted, and as a result more powerful.

Don't let them bother you, they can't really do anything to you, at the same time it's better to have an ally then an enemy so it's best not to tick them off if you can help it.

[dad2one]

Originally Posted by Dayray

If nurses were to band together like physicians we would wield a great power over the future of healthcare.

See the newest feel-good-about-your-doctor commercial by the AMA. It has a mother and her young daughter thanking the MD who took care of the girl in the NICU years ago. No mention of the round the clock nursing care. I'm sure the MD did do a lot of good, but how about equal time?

[Soleilpie]

Originally Posted by Lionheart

I'm a student finishing up my BSN and I am a little bit concerned about the things I've heard. Quite frankly, I think I'm just as intelligent as any pre-med student in undergrad and if my mommy and daddy drove BMWs and Jaguars, I'm sure I would be one of them too. But we're all not born with a silver spoon in our mouths are we? Anyways, I see it as a law of supply and demand. Why can't a CRNA provide just as great anesthesia as an MDA? At a reasonable cost for the patient at that. So I ask you, starter of this thread, what can the CRNAs, SRNAs, and future SRNAs do now and later to help? And this really concerns me since I attend undergrad in Florida and would like to stay in FLA for MSN (anesthesia) too!

Just a little clarification...everyone who has attended or is attending med school do not all have parents who drive BMWs and Jaguars, nor were they all born with a silver spoon in their mouths. ANYONE who has the drive required to get in and remain in med school can achieve that goal. Though there are some doctors who think less of CRNAs, not all of them do. Let's not generalize about the entire profession. Like someone said in another post, the bad and the ugly exist in all professions.

[Crystle_clear]

I seems to me that mabye the MD's feel the same way about CRNA's that nurses feel about QMA's. I'm not say that this prejudice is right but as a QMA, I been suject to more than my share of "talking down to", especially on this website. Before everyone starts making generalized statements about other groups, let's take a min. and look at ourselves.