CRNA salary in 1980s

[zaga21]

In light of some of the legislation in the works a few people in the anesthesia dept were talking about the MDA and surgeon salaries in the 80's. I was wondering if CRNAs had a big down turn during that time as well. I had no idea that their salaries dropped since the 80s...or so the anesthesiologist told me. Don't flame me for this topic, just learning a little history here.

[Gods child]

I have never heard about the pay being better in the 80's. I have heard rumors that the pay of CRNA's is not expected to increase much, and in some instances may even decrease (on average). I don't know how true this is, its just something I've read on different message boards and internet articles.

[endorphinrush]

The city I live in has 2 major Universities that have a CRNA program. Initially there was only one. Then the second was started supposedly due to the shortage of CRNA's. A few years ago, average starting salary for a CRNA here was around 117k a year, not counting call. Currently, I have surfed the web and found start salaries in my area as low as 90k. I attribute this drop to the fact that we have 2 schools now putting out CRNA's and there are a ton of them here. If you are willing to leave the general area and hit the smaller towns, pay goes up a good bit. I know from talking to MDA's that their pay has pretty much peaked and they don't get much in the way of raises. This is true of a lot of MD's though. Our main CV surgeon told me recently that he did less surgery and made more money in the 80's and 90s and that now he works much harder for a lot less. A Interventional Radiologist friend of mine was complaining a couple of years back. He said he only made 500k a year and that he hadn't had a raise in 10 years. I couldn't help but laugh. I made 1/10th that and I didn't get a raise either

[mspcrna]

I have been a CRNA since 1979, salaries have gone up- up -up for the past two decades.

Marc