RNFAs in C-Sections - Pro/Con

[BELCJ]

I would like to hear from other facilities as to whether or not your hospital provides first assists for C-sections, and also if you know where I can find information on whether or not one is actually needed for all, or even the majority, of c-sections. Thank you in advance for taking the time to respond.

[SmilingBluEyes]

Our RNFA comes in ONLY for the csection, then he/she goes home immediately after the case is finished.

[midwife2b]

Thank you to everyone for all your information. This is invaluable to me as I look at how to proceed with our physicians' requests. I have a couple questions regarding some responses.

For those of you who use your own RNFA staff, are they called in for the c-sections only, and then sent home, or do they do regular nursing when not in the OR? If you pull your own RN staff to function as RNFA, how do you adequately cover them while they're in the OR?

For those where the physician pays the RNFA. Who provides the RNFA? If this is a hospital employee, how do the docs pay? If not an employee, are the docs responsible for obtaining, just like any other assistant?

I once worked in a small hospital that used RNFA's as part of the OR team for certain surgeries, but not all. There were a dozen or so procedures that the hospital required a second surgeon for (I can't remember them, unfortunately; but some were ortho procedures).

So at night, if a C-birth was called, I called a scrub, circulator, RNFA, and CRNA. Salaries of all the staff was paid by the hospital. During the day the RNFA could also scrub and circulate as the need arose so these positions were quite flexible. The RNFA's did make more money (like 10% more).

Not sure how the coding was handled but the hospital did get a little more $ for procedures using their RNFA.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Our RNFAs only scrub for stat sections.