Originally Posted by INFIDEL
No advanatge at all to a DNAP... go the PhD ROUTE and AVOID ALL THAT NONSENSE.
If you are an a CRNA when the mandatory educational standards are adopted... you will NOT have to get the higher degree. So there is no real advanatge to the DNAP unless you do it ab initio.
I strongly suggest an MSA for the simple reason that the time spent in an MSN program studying Orem, Hall or Abdellah et. al. is spent learning things that will actually make a DIFFERENCE to patient care in the anesthesia world.... physiology etc.
I feel your pain.....BUT....I think that to be fair, if a CRNA is going to get a PhD it will probably be in nursing, no? Therefore theory is required for a PhD as well as a DNAP. I suppose an argument could be made that one could get a PhD in "physiology", but who wants to spend ANOTHER 4-5 years obtaining a tangential degree, that qualifies you to do research, true but adds very little to your clinical practice.
Finally, I think that whether you obtained it "ab initio" or not full practice will require it. (By that I mean working where you want to work). Maybe not in the near future, but its coming.