Do crnas deserve that much salary?

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Don't take me wrong, in Houston, Texas CRNAs stock their rooms, prepare the meds, MDAs see the patients sometimes. CRNAs are told by MDAs that they don't have to see the patient, so you bring the patient to their room. CRNAs hand the drugs to MDAs, they push the drugs, MDAs let them intubate and then leave. CRNAs manage take vitals do the paperwork MDAs come for emergencies, if there is something wrong MDAs take over. Any nurse can do what CRNAs do with the exception of intubation that can be learned by a nurse. My questions do CRNAs have to go to school for 3 years and get a masters degree for this? Do they deserve 220k salary when they don't do anything autonomously? I see a flawed system any thoughts??!!!!

She posted this Jan 2012. So I'm confused about her statements if she is a CRNA perhaps since Texas requires supervising or collaboration with a physician is the real issue?

If you look back further in October of 2010 there's a posted stating she's a BSN Student and 14 months later is the post you quoted where she is a CRNA trying to get an endorsement in Texas???

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Specializes in ER/Tele, Med-Surg, Faculty, Urgent Care.

So OP you are making 220K but are unhappy with your role? Your posts are difficult to understand due to the grammar & diction.

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I think they deserve whatever the market will yield.

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If you look back further in October of 2010 there's a posted stating she's a BSN Student and 14 months later is the post you quoted where she is a CRNA trying to get an endorsement in Texas???

Well that's certainly a suspicious time frame.

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I work in a rural hospital in Louisiana. We only have CRNAs. They're in a group by themselves and do their own billing so their pay depends on how many cases they do and how much Medicaid/Medicare/insurance reimburses. I wouldn't ever begrudge that they make more than I do as an RN. They paid for their schooling, pay for insurance, and have a lot of responsibility/liability. Plus they're usually willing to help with intubation or starting difficult IVs even though they don't get paid for that.

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Specializes in Anesthesia.
Well....just at what point are they competent for that or competent oversight by another CRNA? 2 months? A year? When? That's what difference it makes.

Every CRNA should be competent to work independently from day 1 after graduation or they shouldn't be a CRNA IMHO. That is how I was trained and that is how I train all my students.

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Specializes in OR.

I've been in the OR for something like 15 yrs. Never have I seen a CRNA "just do paperwork, etc." As far as the CRNA being told they don't have to see the patient. I rarely, rarely see that too. Most of the time if that happens, it's that the CRNA is comfortable with not seeing their patient beforehand. Not my choice but also not my decision. I know many a CRNA that I would want in my surgery as opposed to docs.

I tried to get into anesthesia school. I hated the ICU with a passion and I couldn't pull off better than a C in statistics. So yeah, I have respect for those who could. CRNAs being paperwork jockeys is equivalent to saying us RN or BSNs are nothing but gofers.

Oh and yes, they do earn that 220K a year (trust me it's not that much in the great state of Flori-duh.) but its not too shabby and it's well earned!

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Specializes in med/surg.

They deserve it. I am from PA, but now live in Houston Texas also. They are skilled, highly educated clinicians, with a person's life in their hands each time they work. It may look to you as they are not doing much, but they probably are too busy to notice.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Float Pool Nursing.

They also put central lines in which takes quite some skill and is a procedure not without risk. Would you like to be doing that?

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Specializes in Registered Nurse.

I might be wrong because this is not my area of expertise at all.....but it seems CRNA's I have seen practice get the cases the team leader (Anesthesiologist) gives them. So, they should be qualified to do their job. The pay should be what they negotiate.

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A person's salary is the price of their labor to an employer. Nobody deserves a certain amount of money. If a company could buy your labor for cheaper they would. CRNAs, like any employee, get reimbursed the local market value of their skills. Nothing more, nothing less.

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The OP is obviously an internet troll, I could see that before I read any other comments on the thread. No BSN educated nurse would form a paragraph like that with such poor sentence structure and grammar. Not to mention that no BSN educated nurse would say such a ridiculous and uninformed statement about CRNA's, especially when they claim to work the OR. Usually OR nurses are the first to tell me how impressive the CRNA's are and even desire to get into the ICU to have a hope of attending CRNA school themselves one day. Even if they don't aspire to do anesthesia one day any nurse I've ever spoken to about it greatly respects and admires CRNA's.

Word to the wise, don't get inflamed by fake internet trolls who enjoy causing drama on internet forums. I've noticed a few showing up in the advanced practice threads in the last year saying obviously inflammatory and ill-informed things that are derogatory to nurses and the APRN field. They aren't even sharing a valid or defensible opinion with any evidenced research to back it up, so there's no way to debate logic to them.

Don't feed the internet trolls and eventually they will die.

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