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Discussion

CFA's

We have 4 ST's who have advanced their training and skills by becoming and/or maintaining their CFA's in the OR. My DD and I are working on getting them advancements as right now most are working at or near top of the ST scale. Would anyone mind sharing with me an approximate pay scale that their facilty uses so I can work with our HR in the process. I've already worked on the job descriptions and additional duties but wanted some back up of info to use. Please respond here or if you wish shoot an email to my home account at [email protected]

Thank you as always for the helpful information.

Stacey

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I am kind of curious, what other duties could you assign them besides the obvious?

  • Author

Duties specific to their specialty of expertise such as in-service/education/instrumentation and equipment evaluation and replacement, QI/QA, assist w/cost savings and other hospital initiatives for the quarter or year.........again, just things off the cuff!!

  • Expert
Duties specific to their specialty of expertise such as in-service/education/instrumentation and equipment evaluation and replacement, QI/QA, assist w/cost savings and other hospital initiatives for the quarter or year.........again, just things off the cuff!!

The issue is that they are not really qualified to do any of these things just by the nature of the CFA.

Presumably you have a nurse educator that does inservices. Equipment evaluation is pretty complex and usually done by the service line managers who have the experience to do this. QI/QA can be done by anyone so its appropriate.

There are two issues that you may not have anticipated. One is that by promoting a difference in the techs you will probably arouse some hostility by those that are not "special".

The other is the affect on the CFAs. I have seen this in two hospitals where I worked. At least where I worked the method was to pay the CFAs (or RNFAs) extra money when they assisted. It was usually $1-2 per hour. The issue in both places is that they started to resent the "regular" work. It got to the point where several would call and if they were on the schedule to tech (as opposed to assist) they would call in.

Part of it depends on your demand. I have never worked at a place where there was enough demand to warrant full time CFAs. I've heard of places, just never seen them. Most of the time the physicians have their own assistants. So the only time the hospital ends up supplying one is "self pay" or when a surgeon wants an assistant in a case that doesn't reimburse for one. Overall they tend to be money losers but keeps the surgeons happy.

David Carpenter, PA-C

  • Author

Thanks for responding. I am surprised by your comment about qualified to do things like in-servicing. We have RN's and ST's often do in-servicing for the department, especially those w/vast experience or those who have made set or card changes. Our educator coordinates but the staff present. In my previous facility I was a Leader for Urology and gave in-services all of the time. Also, our service line managers are for us "service leaders" who are RN's or ST's like yours w/vast experience in their specialty. I had to chuckle as that would actually be the 4 CFA's we have.:chuckle

Again, I appreciate the response......it is always fun to hear "how the other half lives."

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