Latest Comments by IndiCRNA
IndiCRNA 3,893 Views
Joined Nov 22, '12 - from 'Rienlander Wisconsin'. IndiCRNA is a CRNA. He has '1' year(s) of experience and specializes in 'ICU, transport, CRNA'. Posts: 120 (63% Liked) Likes: 249
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In my area there seems to be a bias against NA's who were trained at schools in the Southeast. They have a reputation of not being well trained, in particular for independent practice.
Schools here in the upper Midwest usually don't require the GRE but do require a lot of high quality ICU experience. They also have a great reputation for training independent practitioners.
As for CRNA, the CRNA training will, by 2025 be the same length as medical school (3 years). I think that the (sort of) new 3 year medical schools will compete with the 3 year CRNA programs for the best and brightest candidates.
You appear to be an outstanding candidate. I wish everybody would realize that getting into NA school is EASY! The standards are low for getting in. If you apply to 3-5 schools you are sure to get into 3 or 4 of them.
Some of the nurses I see who get accepted I wouldn't trust to take care of a stable DKA patient, much less post op hearts. On the good news side some of the worst nurses who I have seen get accepted didn't make it through.
Don't sweat your previous degree.
My friends who graduated this year started out at around $140K for those working in the cities and $180K for those working in smaller towns.
Here on Allnurses is the only place I have ever heard it said that the field is becoming saturated.
I like all the bright, ambitious, hard working and intelligent young women I get to work with. I love teaching these bright young ladies coming out of college every year eager to learn and excited for their future.
I also working with the older, experienced and street wise nurses who have been doing this job for years and have a wealth of great advice and tips to offer. I have (and continue to) learn so much from these ladies.
I find that being a male allows me to avoid much of the drama and reduces interpersonal communication barriers that I often see between female nurses. The young nurses are happy to learn from me and the older nurses are happy to teach me.
I usually work about 60 hours a week when I am doing my scheduled cases and 21 hours a week when on call. The difference is that we get paid 100% of the compensation for the anesthesia reimbursement. We don't give half of it away to an MDA who (maybe) sticks his head in once a case and is always there to sign the charting as I observed in the ACT facilities I worked in.
Another key is that our hospital is rural but part of a much bigger health system. The system rotates their specialty surgeons through. We only have two resident general surgeons. For example every other Tuesday is urology cases and we do them all day with the urologist traveling to our hospital to do cases. Without being part of a larger health system we would not have the volume we do.
If you are qualified NA school is very easy to get into. Pretty much everyone I know who wanted to got in. Good GPA, 3.0 or better, a degree, and 2-3 years of high quality ICU experience should do it.
I love my job. All of my CRNA friends like anesthesia and are very happy they did it. It does have it's own brand of suck, but much less so than staff nursing.
ICU experience is mandatory for CRNA.
My school required basic chemistry within 5 years. I took it at a local community college. I also STRONGLY recommend you take a basic physics class. I struggled with it and almost didn't make it through.
I don't know much about the south east except that it is a terrible place to be a nurse. I don't have any idea if they even have CRNA owned practices there.
Right out of school I went to work for a large health system here in Wisconsin in their main flagship hospital. I started hearing about locums opportunities locally and started working them. Mostly these were in the smaller hospitals in the same health system and in other systems in the state. This lead to me meeting another CRNA who we also doing locums and who was 1/3 owner of the practice I now work with. She asked if I would be willing to cover them for 3 months of her maternity leave. I agreed even though it meant I had to give up my full time job. They liked me and hired me after the 3 months was over. I was told one of the partners was retiring soon and that I could fill his position as an employee and after a year buy into the practice. That is exactly what I did.
They had already tried a couple other CRNAs who didn't work out because they were not comfortable being 100% on their own, but they were all trained in the south, not the Midwest like me. I did a lot of rotations in rural hospitals in school.
So I guess that the answer to your question is that it was all word of mouth.
OP you sound like a real go-getter who will have great success regardless of what you choose to do. Good job and thank you for posting your story so that others may learn and benefit.
He read constantly and had plans on working, at least part time, into his 70's. Also a heck of a nice man who loved to teach.
To the OP. Remember that anesthesia was a NURSING specialty long before it was a physician specialty. The first MDAs had to be taught by early CRNAs. Never pay any attention to anything said on studentdoc.net.
I can't really tell you how MDAs treat CRNAs. If one ever shows up around here I will let you know.
We enjoy a fantastic quality of life and live in an area that is the vacation destination for hundreds of thousands. Nice house on a beautiful lake that has great fishing, skiing and other water sports. In addition we have all the toys, including large tracts of forest and fields for hunting. I barrowed a little over $100K to support myself through NA school. Now three years to the month after graduation I have TWO payments left. Best of all I have two weeks out of 6 off. That's right, after every month of work I get two weeks off. That's not a month of working 24/7. It's two weeks of Monday-Friday scheduled cases, usually finishing work every day by 3PM and no call, followed by two weeks of no scheduled cases but being on call 24/7 (average 21 hours of work a week when on call). $300K +/year is more than possible.
I made $119K plus benefits in my last full year as an ICU RN with only doing limited OT, usually just one OT shift a month. No way I would do anesthesia for that kind of money. But then I am a country boy and love rural living.