japaho41

I am not sure I agree that this is the best practice and I feel that if you need to use relaxants you should just go ahead and place an ETT.

Airways can be placed but the depth of the anesthesia needs to adequate for the patient to tolerate a nasal or oral airway being placed. Not sure about plans for the facility to tell patient to bring in CPAP because I am not present at the pre-admission interview. Not sure what % of patient have a problem and yes anesthesia is always available in recovery.

You are exactly right, I guess you better go quickily then.

With a growing (meaning heavier) patient population which then leads to more patients with OSA. It is always a concern of mine once the patient is in the PACU that they will obstruct their airway or be over nacrcotized. I make sure that I extubate these patient when they are alittle more awake than patient without OSA, taking a good tidal volume and adequate RR. Sit them up, unless contraindicated, use a nasal or oral airway if needed. Ideally the patient with OSA should bring there machine with them to the hospital the day of surgery and have it available to use in the PACU. Most patients are not told to do so and think because they are in the hospital that there will be one available for them to use. I guess that all goes back to there pre-op instructions.

I was entertained as well by the open bottle of sevo being used as an airfreshener. I think the best solution to the bathroom dilema is to always go before the case, stay mildly on the dry side meaning don't drink tons of fluids. Page the anesthesiologist stat to the room if you really need to go. I would really, really have to go to leave my patient in the care of any the circulator.

There are quite a few online BSN programs and perhaps there are those that are not looked as very reputable by program directors. I think the best thing to do is to look at the admission criteria for each program you are interested in and see how you compare to what they would like to see in a candidate. Secondly, if you want to take a step further, that is if the program director would be willing to share with you what the stats were on there latest admission class (what do they really admit). By this I mean ask them of the class you admitted what was the averages of GPA, GRE score and years of experience. This may give you a better understanding of the barriers of admission. As for the DNP, I really would not factor this into the equation at this point especially if you are going to apply in the next few years. To my knowledge this standard has been adopted by the AACN and not necessarily the Council on Certification of Nurse Anesthetists. What I was told by my program director who called the Council and asked if they were going to stop accrediting MSN anesthesia programs in 2015, the answer was no.

I will be honest your GPA is well below a competitive level. You have to consider when most schools set the benchmark at 3.0 I would guess that there would be ample candidates that by far exceed the minimum. Taking a few class and getting A's in them well help raise your GPA, but unfortunately after 80 credit hours or so (which you most likely already have) once it is down it is a slow climb back up. Sorry if this seems harsh but it is the reality of your situation minus a sugar coating.

I think what you mean is that they have an APRN (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse). Some states require all advance practice nurses to also have the APRN as well even if they are a CRNA, NP or clinical nurse specialist. The APRN does not allow the CRNA to practice as an NP as far as I understand. A CRNA does not has prescriptive rights as does a NP.

:yeah:

I think you sort of have a misconception of what being watched is all about or you missed my point of what patient care experience really means. So you are saying the your biology degree or whatever BS degree that you had was far tougher than Nursing school. I might retink that statement considering you have not endured nursing school. I suppose that working in the ICU is also much easier than whatever job a student in AA school did prior to school. You also have to think about this as well, when you say tougher classes, multiple people in my program have additional degrees prior to nursing in addition to a range of 4-9years of Intensive care experience. You have to be knowledgable about a topic prior to throwing out comments like that.

Good for you, I know that there is an international Nurse anesthesia society that is working credentialing programs so that there grads can work in othere countries. Basically what it comes down to at least for me and a lot of other CRNA's that I have talked to in the past is that key component that AA's are missing is the intensive care experience. If you are even in support of AA's that is hard to downplay the value of that experience.

ECU's program is full time, no part time option. I think that UNC-Charlotte has a part-time option. I think that if I were you I would go full-time. If it is money that you are worried about just take out what you need in the form of loans. I just don't think trying to go to CRNA school even part-time and having to worry about working is a good option if that is what your plan is. I am sure some have pulled it off but I don't think I could, but that is just me.

I don't think that if the AA route was even shorter by 10yrs that I would advise anyone to go that route. Like a previous post stated why would want to limit yourself to just a hand of states and hospitals that would allow you to work. Secondly anywhere you go is going to be dominated by CRNA's that are not going to respect you nor your profession one bit. Spend the extra time and follow the correct path into the profession on anesthesia.

I think that everyone has those days, weeks or months when you say what the hell was I thinking when I decided this was going to be my career path. No matter how many people tell you that it's going to really suck at times you can never appreciate that until you experience it for yourself. No one ever said this was going to be easy by an stretch. You just have to expect that there will be days that you want to crawl beneath the OR table to get away from the crap that is rolling down the hill from your CRNA that day. Take cover because if it has not happened to you yet it probably will and if it doesn't consider yourself lucky. Sure everyone has felt like quitting but take a look over shoulder and look at all the hurdles and hoops that you had to go through just to get to this point. That is enough of a driving force for me that keeps me in the game.

I agree with the above posters that this is a nurse anesthesia site. It sounds like you need to do some more research into what you really want to do. Yes you are in high school still and you are probably five steps ahead of yourself. So once you realize that PharmD and CRNA are quite different you will then be able explore more into what is right for you. Now they do have some overlap in that anesthesia is pharmacology in action as you are giving powerful drugs and seeing response rather quickily.