Southern California Kaisers?

catcolalex · Oct 5, 2006

I trained at kaiser in pasadena, and have been to a lot of the so. cal kaisers. here is the basics,

autonomy-not very much, always an MDA involved with every case.

regional- if you define regional as spinal epidural yes, most of the time, but nothing at anaheim. if it involves the real definition of regional as including peripheral nerve blocks, no dont even think about it.

pay-120ish with bennies, if bennies waived 140ish, not a lot with so-cal cost of living, i think that translated over to the same as 50 g's in utah.

scheduling-hourly employee, 40 hrs. week, morning break, lunch break, afternoon break, go home at 3:00, call varies

hearts-CRNA's do not do hearts in so-cal kaiser. the srna's are the slaves in los angeles where kaiser students get heart "experience" with the guidance of mda's.

OB-most kaisers have crna's do ob, except anaheim. anaheim sucks. its where crna practice goes to die.

CRNA's do not do central lines at kaiser. or at least they are not supposed to.

and the new thing is, the crna's are now not to do peds under 1 yr. a peds mda is supposed to do that.

relationship- the relationship between mda and crna at kaiser is usually pretty good, some are better than others, as always, but a lot of the time, the kaiser crna is happy to do as little as necessary and so is the mda, thus a good relationship is possible if the right combination is there i.e. proactive CRNA and lazy mda, or lazy crna and proactive mda.

personally- i would consider working at only one kaiser facility-kaiser fontana. the practice there is the best of any kaiser, best cases, mda's OB etc. that being said, I will never work at a kaiser facility in my life for the simple reason of I want to do regional, as in peripheral blocks, and i dont want anyone telling me how to do an anesthetic.

Kaiser, however, excells at pre-oping pts. and optimizing pts for surgery, i have got to give them their props on that one.

tde1992 · Oct 5, 2006

I am glad this info was posted I am an RN and thinking about applying to Kaisers program.