Nov 2008 ASA revision of ACT

[californianurse]

Just wondering how much this revision will impact nurse anesthesia programs. The first sentence of the ASA statement of the anesthesia care team is:

"Anesthesiology is the practice of medicine including, but not limited to, preoperative patient evaluation, anesthetic planning, intraoperative and postoperative care and the management of systems and personnel that support these activities."

Does this mean that we won't be able to do preop evaluating and selecting anesthetic agents? Of course, we will always need our preceptor's OK for the eval and drug planning, but will we be completely revoked of this scope of practice?

I'm not familiar with the prior ASA statement of the ACT, so I'm not sure exactly what's changed in this revision.

Thanks for your input.

[loveanesthesia]

I think it could have an impact in a few places where the MDA's are very political. Most MDAs will most likely ignore it, they may say they follow it but not really change anything.

[shandsburnRN-CRNA]

....and I guess if you work in a system where there are no MDA's, this won't affect you at all.

[nurselizk]

This is an ASA position statement, not law regarding scope of practice.