CRNA School and Debt Advice

2Ask · Feb 28, 2019

On 1/21/2019 at 9:09 AM, PediatricCTICURN said:
I've been a CTICU nurse for 3 years and am getting my application ready for CRNA school next fall, but the whole financial implications are really holding me back and making me nervous! I have 120k from undergrad because I messed around and didn't know I wanted to do nursing until it was too late in the game! If I started CRNA school next fall I'd be done by the age of 30, but I could have upwards of 300k of student debt! I don't think I could willingly borrrow that much and have to live paycheck to paycheck after 2-3 years of tough school! What are everyone else's thoughts ??

My teenage son was looking at CRNA and I discouraged it because of seeing lots of schools adding CRNA programs. When all those schools start cranking out grads and the market is saturated, the income is going to come down. I have met many MANY DNP's who are still working as hospital staff nurses because they cannot find a DNP job. IMO CRNA is not far behind.

You live in San Diego? and own a house here? and make bank as a CTICU nurse? If I was in your shoes, I wouldn't do it.

guest769224 · Feb 28, 2019

On 2/28/2019 at 12:49 AM, 2Ask said:
When all those schools start cranking out grads and the market is saturated, the income is going to come down. I have met many MANY DNP's who are still working as hospital staff nurses because they cannot find a DNP job. IMO CRNA is not far behind.

Doubtful. Projections for CRNA job market is vibrant, healthy, good outlook ahead.

2Ask · Feb 28, 2019

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.pana.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/ODonnell_Workforce_1page.pdf

Total of registered CRNA's in US is 44,000

Total of registered nurses in US is @3,400,000

CRNA projected growth 30% so generously 15,000 more jobs

RN projected growth 15% so miserly 500,000 jobs

Depends how many CRNA schools open and how many grads they crank out. The powerpoint referenced above said that CRNA's in Minnesota were not able to find jobs unless they moved. I know lots of DNP's in that boat working as staff nurses and paying down school debt.

ProgressiveThinking, MSN, CRNA · Mar 1, 2019

That was from 2011 when the market was barely starting to recover from the great recession. All predictions back then for most fields were doom and gloom. The job market is different now. Obviously the market will have peaks and valleys, but the current CRNA job market is currently very healthy. Most people in CRNA/SRNA only social media groups confirm this with their posts. Most of the CRNAs that I've encountered have two jobs (one full time and one per diem). Of course you have your outliers, and of course geographic region plays a role, but as of now it seems every school still has a job placement rate of 100%.

Sure, some grads may have to move. That's the way it is with a lot of fields though, and isn't specific to anesthesia. Is the anesthesia job market as wide open as the nursing market? No, but very few other jobs are. The nursing job market is wide open because of turnover (code browns, crazy coworkers and family members, unrealistic managers etc), and of course hospitals employ more nursing staff than most anesthesia groups employ CRNAs. It's a numbers game.

When I was an ICU nurse (after I got experience), I probably could have worked at any hospital in my city either as staff or through registry within a month. It's not like that in anesthesia, but it's also not like that in most other fields. If you do this, you have to look at it as a career change.

Sure, you're piggybacking off of your skill set as an ICU nurse, but if you become a CRNA, you're becoming a provider, and I have to say that it's so much more satisfying for me on a cerebral and professional level than bedside nursing ever was, or could be, for me at least. Towards the end of my bedside nursing career I just could not stand to clean up another GI bleed. To me, this is priceless.

Is market saturation a concern? Absolutely. More schools keep popping up, and the average number of grads each year is ~ 2500 (still way less than NPs which average ~30,000 or something crazy like that). The good news is a lot of models and practices are employing more CRNAs. More and more MDA only groups are switching over to the ACT model, and a lot of hospitals are figuring out that it's most cost effective to allow CRNAs to practice independently. That, along with the fact that the average age of both CRNAs (44k of them) and MDAs (40k of them) is ~50 years old, is good news. More and more will retire.

If you read my previous posts, you'll find that in the past I struggled with whether or not CRNA was financially worth it, and if moving for school and/or a job was worth it. There are so many variables and market/practice changes that it's really difficult to predict the future of anesthesia. You have to do it because you have an interest in anesthesia, and want to be an anesthesia provider. You HAVE to shadow to figure this out.

Finances aside, as type this in a delirious haze from doing close to 64 hours of clinical a week along with frequent 16 hour call shifts, I have to say that so far I'm glad I went to CRNA school.

PediatricCTICURN, BSN, RN · Mar 1, 2019

11 hours ago, ProgressiveThinking said:
That was from 2011 when the market was barely starting to recover from the great recession. All predictions back then for most fields were doom and gloom. The job market is different now. Obviously the market will have peaks and valleys, but the current CRNA job market is currently very healthy. Most people in CRNA/SRNA only social media groups confirm this with their posts. Most of the CRNAs that I've encountered have two jobs (one full time and one per diem). Of course you have your outliers, and of course geographic region plays a role, but as of now it seems every school still has a job placement rate of 100%.
Sure, some grads may have to move. That's the way it is with a lot of fields though, and isn't specific to anesthesia. Is the anesthesia job market as wide open as the nursing market? No, but very few other jobs are. The nursing job market is wide open because of turnover (code browns, crazy coworkers and family members, unrealistic managers etc), and of course hospitals employ more nursing staff than most anesthesia groups employ CRNAs. It's a numbers game.
When I was an ICU nurse (after I got experience), I probably could have worked at any hospital in my city either as staff or through registry within a month. It's not like that in anesthesia, but it's also not like that in most other fields. If you do this, you have to look at it as a career change.
Sure, you're piggybacking off of your skill set as an ICU nurse, but if you become a CRNA, you're becoming a provider, and I have to say that it's so much more satisfying for me on a cerebral and professional level than bedside nursing ever was, or could be, for me at least. Towards the end of my bedside nursing career I just could not stand to clean up another GI bleed. To me, this is priceless.
Is market saturation a concern? Absolutely. More schools keep popping up, and the average number of grads each year is ~ 2500 (still way less than NPs which average ~30,000 or something crazy like that). The good news is a lot of models and practices are employing more CRNAs. More and more MDA only groups are switching over to the ACT model, and a lot of hospitals are figuring out that it's most cost effective to allow CRNAs to practice independently. That, along with the fact that the average age of both CRNAs (44k of them) and MDAs (40k of them) is ~50 years old, is good news. More and more will retire.
If you read my previous posts, you'll find that in the past I struggled with whether or not CRNA was financially worth it, and if moving for school and/or a job was worth it. There are so many variables and market/practice changes that it's really difficult to predict the future of anesthesia. You have to do it because you have an interest in anesthesia, and want to be an anesthesia provider. You HAVE to shadow to figure this out.
Finances aside, as type this in a delirious haze from doing close to 64 hours of clinical a week along with frequent 16 hour call shifts, I have to say that so far I'm glad I went to CRNA school.

Such an awesome response! Thank you so much for all that information! You make me look forward to applying and hopefully getting in even more than I already look forward to it!