"Automated Anesthesia"?!? -- no need for Anesthesia staff in the room reported

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So I'm not even a nursing student yet but I've already shadowed a CRNA for 50 hours and I'm really dying to be one myself. I just saw this short piece in the New York Times about the important ideas/innovations of 2008, and was shocked to see that "McSleepy," an anesthesia machine, was touted as the "world's first fully automated anesthesia system" and has already be used in 40 operations. Will I have to worry about my job becoming obsolete by the time I finish anesthesia school? :eek:

NY Times summary:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/14/magazine/2008_IDEAS.html#a-ideas-2

Discovery News article:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/13/mcsleepy-anesthesia.html

n_g... I'll keep rationalizing why reality is the way it is and why patients and the healthcare system will never give a machine to the autonomy to take someone near death then bring them safely back. I'm not saying there would never be a place for a machine like this...but your ideas about replacing anesthesia staff to save a few bucks will NEVER happen. 140K per year is nothing compared to 1 lawsuit payout resulting from pt death/ machine error...Hospitals will not take the risk. If anything untoward happens and people know an automated machine was used...it won't matter how safe it's been proven to be...they will sue...and hospitals know it. Just curious...are you an anesthesia provider???...or in the healthcare filed at all?? I can't imagine someone who knows what they're talking about making these statements.

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" anesthesiologists at last "liberated," as he puts it, from being confined to any single operating room".

MDAs are already "liberated", by CRNAs from the OR. :bow: They are the only medical specialty that can have others doing their work and make money doing it. What I see affecting anesthesia much more than this type of technology is things like "genomics, proteomics, tissue enginneering, etc." :typing There will always need to be some type of human element to anesthesia.

Dream On,

DM

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