Advice for Aspiring CRNA

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Hello to everyone and thanks for anyone who posts to this thread in advance. I am currently a paramedic and am about to begin my BSN program in the fall of 2015. I should graduate at the end of December 2016. My goal is to become a CRNA. I was looking for any advice that current CRNA's or CRNA students might be able to give. I have been a paramedic for 2 years. My GPA (outside of paramedic school) is 3.7. I would like to eventually apply to TWU or TCU in Fort Worth for my CRNA education. I made A's in A&P 1 and 2, Microbiology, and Stats. I made B's in Chemistry 1 and Pathophysiology. Any advice or a general outlook at me being competitive this far is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Specializes in ICU.

Good luck on boards and the job hunt! I'm curious to see how easy or difficult it will be for you to find a job! Definitely keep up posted in the next few months!

aTruthfully, If you think becoming a CRNA will allow you to make more money for less work, you're wrong. Sorry. And as someone who is going to graduate in the next 5 months who is currently looking for jobs, I can tell you that the market is tight and IMHO there feels like a surplus of new grads and it is driving down wages. Yea there are places where you can make 150K+ a year, but they tend to be in not so nice or far away areas. Sorry, but people who come right out of the gate saying that they wanna be a CRNA and haven't even been a nurse for any amount of time make me think they are in it for the money. You can say that the money has nothing to do with it, but there's 2 chances that Im gonna believe you or anyone for that matter....slim and none, sorry just being honest.

And to be honest, if you think being a CRNA is all action and glamorous then you need to shadow someone. It's not all action, and being that your an ex (or current) medic, I know the mentality, I've been in EMS for almost 13 years.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

Actually already secured a job last week. But it took many rejected applications before I got it. And truth be told, they needed me more than I needed them. Bht it's at a fairly prestigious hospital in NY, Level 1 trauma, I can do everything I learned in school and every cases under the sun. But it's 1.5 hrs away from home. Oh well, I used to commute 1.25 hrs to NYC to work, what's 15 more minutes ?!?

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Specializes in Step-down ICU.
Let me weigh in here as a person who went into the BSN program thinking that CRNA was the only way to go. In fact, my original reason for going into nursing at all was to study CRNA - not because it paid well, but because it was anesthesia and (I thought) it would get me there faster than going the anesthesiologist route. Now that I am finishing my BSN, my feelings about it are mixed.

For one thing, nursing is a lot broader than you may suspect. I have found that there are many other areas of nursing than I knew before, and many are very attractive. I thought anesthesia was the only medical field that could possibly interest me, but now I am not so certain.

Secondly, in order to get into CRNA school, you'll need that elusive one to three years of critical care experience. My experience has been that critical care departments are well aware of the fact that new graduate nurses see them as a feed-in to get their experience and bounce out to CRNA school. So they are reluctant to hire new grads. Your mileage may vary, but from what I have seen and the people I have talked to, your path to CRNA school may be a lot longer than you suspect.

Thirdly, the word is getting out that CRNA's make bank and so more and more people are going into it. The days when we could command >$150,000 forever are ending. It still pays more than normal bedside nursing, but where there is gold, there is a gold rush - and pay goes down.

Fourth, there are already rumors that robots will begin replacing CRNA's before too much longer. Maybe not this year or next, but sometime in the future. The anesthesia department of the future will likely be one MD anesthesiologist and a few anesthesia assistants overseeing the work of machines.

Fifth - and perhaps most impacting for me - when I examine the requirements to get into CRNA school, I see that they fulfill most of the requirements to get into medical school. And the cost of a CNRA is comparable to a medical degree. Given that you'll need your four year degree, plus a couple years of experience (which you may not get right away), and you'll have to quit your job to study CRNA anyway, does it really save you any time? If your passion truly is anesthesia, what about pursuing it another way?

You can see I've spent lots of time thinking this over as I stare at the ceiling at night, and I've spent a lot of time calling around to different schools, talking with current and future CRNA's, and speaking with anesthesiologists.

Best of luck on whatever you decide.

Do you have any literature/research to support this? I'd be interested in reading it.

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Do you have any literature/research to support this? I'd be interested in reading it.

There is no literature to support it. Robots cannot run and manage a code blue. A CRNA can.

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Key word: WANT. Every nurse wants to become an APRN but how many actually implement it? I've known so many people that have said they were gonna take that path but never did. Do what you love. I love anethesia...I just couldn't imagine doing anything that I would enjoy as much. As far as jobs, you won't have options like you would as a RN but there are jobs out there and the money is still there are well. Then again, you couldn't pay me $300k to be a bedside nurse for the rest of my life so it's not about the money for me.

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