University of Tulsa Nurse Anesthetist Program

CowboyMedic, DNP, APRN, CRNA · Oct 30, 2018

Brandon05 said:
Which school are you interviewing at if you don't mind me asking? Or if you give me your email I'll send you an email. Hopefully something will come out soon on when and if they will do program here in Oklahoma. Good luck with your interview.

Union University, interview is in 2 weeks.

Oklahoma 1 · Nov 21, 2018

How did your interview go?

CowboyMedic, DNP, APRN, CRNA · Nov 21, 2018

Brandon B said:
How did your interview go?

I thought it went well but I was not accepted to the program. I'm hoping Tulsa gets their act together soon.

Oklahoma 1 · Nov 21, 2018

I'm sorry to hear that. Yes I heard sometime next year they should have it ready. Don't give up!

CowboyMedic, DNP, APRN, CRNA · Jul 30, 2019

It sounds like they have hired a Program Director. The OANA President commented on a Facebook post asking if Oklahoma was ever going to get a CRNA program. It looks like they are shooting for a Fall 2020 start.

Oklahoma 1 · Jul 30, 2019

That’s good! I have decided not to pursue this anymore. After speaking with a CRNA and other comments I have read about CRNAs who are unhappy with their jobs, It made me reevaluate if this is the career choice I wanted to go into. And after careful consideration of the amount of time it would take, time away from family, and the cost I decided it was not for me. So good luck to you in your Journey.

loveanesthesia · Jul 31, 2019

What comments discouraged you?

Oklahoma 1 · Jul 31, 2019

I don’t wanna say, it was just an unprofessional response to my questions and that’s all I’m going to say. But it did help me really think about my career path moving forward. CRNA is tough path and you have to know that’s what you want! And after re-evaluating my thoughts on this, I decided it would be more difficult at this time in my life to pursue this career path.

MurseMedicRRT · Jul 31, 2019

On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 9:57 AM, Oklahoma 1 said:
That’s good! I have decided not to pursue this anymore. After speaking with a CRNA and that coupled with other comments I have read about CRNAs who are unhappy with their jobs, It made me reevaluate if this is the career choice I wanted to go into. And after careful consideration of the amount of time it would take, time away from family, and the cost I decided it was not for me. So good luck to you in your Journey.

Cost, time requirements to be successful, time away from family, and family needing me to contribute financially are my reasons for not pursuing this.

JSchmittCRNA, APRN, CRNA · Jul 31, 2019

12 hours ago, Oklahoma 1 said:
I don’t wanna say, it was just an unprofessional response to my questions and that’s all I’m going to say. But it did help me really think about my career path moving forward. CRNA is tough path and you have to know that’s what you want! And after re-evaluating my thoughts on this, I decided it would be more difficult at this time in my life to pursue this career path.

Hello all, I am the current president of OANA. I always encourage anyone who has questions about anesthesia to reach out to me. This thread was brought to my attention by colleagues of mine in the nursing community. I haven’t been on all nurses for sometime, but I felt it was important to return to have dialogue about CRNAs and the Tulsa Program. We will be starting a program in Oklahoma baring any issues with the current candidate that just accepted the program director position. First class anticipated start date will indeed be August 2020. There are 3 approved clinical sites at this time. I have spoken with her at length about her vision for the program and I am very encouraged about the value she will bring to Oklahoma’s healthcare system by increasing the number of well trained CRNAs into our state’s workforce.

Now, Oklahoma 1, I apologize if our interaction was perceived by you to be unprofessional. Our Presidency changes every year so if it was with a previous president I can not speak to how they describe the path to becoming a CRNA. Since I’m not sure who you are it’s hard for me to say one way or another. I speak to hundreds of nurses, legislators, public officials, Universities, etc every month about their interest in anesthesia whether it be via social media, PMs, online discussions as this one, in person, speaking engagements, panel discussions, and so many other venues. So it’s hard for me to remember every encounter. Sometimes it takes me some time to get back to people because Facebook filters messages and I miss those very often. I don’t use this platform so I will try to respond when I have time. But if someone has an immediate question, you can always email me. I make myself incredibly available to discuss CRNAs to not only to my membership but members of the general public, public officials, and the media as well. I always encourage honest and open dialogue about the path to becoming a CRNA. I do not sugar coat anything, because I believe the best path to success to join my profession is to have realistic expectations prior to beginning the journey. In my interactions with non-CRNAs I believe myself to be the upmost professional as I am the voice for our profession here in Oklahoma but also on many other national platforms. I encourage nurses who are interested in pursuing anesthesia as a career path to contact me at [email protected]. I have and will always believe being a CRNA is the best profession in nursing. That is my opinion, but I absolutely love what’s I do and I love sharing that passion with others. I am a very direct person and encourage direct conversation. It is difficult.

Anything worth doing in life that has great reward on the other side shouldn’t be easy. It is a great sacrifice, but the reward on the other side is great. Being a CRNA is both rewarding professionally and financially. But the path is not an easy one and I am always honest to nurses about this. There is a financial sacrifice that must be made by you and your family, you can not work during anesthesia training, so adequate financial preparation is critical as most programs run up tution over $100k. Otherwise student loan debt will be very significant. The time commitment is significant, the stress on your family is significant, it is a sacrifice. But in my humble opinion, 200% worth the sacrifice. It is the most rewarding career. I have worked in many areas of nursing, this by far has been the most challenging and rewarding.

I have had only one interaction that was ever questionable this year that stays in my memory and this was with an individual who was asking a lot of specific questions not just about being a CRNA but started first with questions about our legislative agenda during our big supervision battle for Senate Bill 801 which is confidential information to the board of directors only. This person was NOT even a nurse yet and had not been accepted to any nursing program either. I had lots of members from my CRNA community saying they thought this persons interactions were not with good intention and I reached out to the anesthesia group he claimed to shadow and they did not report back very good information either. I did other research on him through the sheriff’s dept as well because his initial asks raised a LOT of red flags because a quick google search of him brought up a long list of legal troubles and news articles. This person was not even an RN yet and was wanting to skip discussing how to become a nurse first and jump straight into CRNA. I was honest with him about how his focus should be on becoming a nurse first and he had at least 12 years of work in front of him which is the truth.

Oklahoma 1 · Jul 31, 2019

It was you I spoke with, and yes there were a lot of questions that were asked, and I already knew the path to nursing because I started out this path, and was just a few classes shy of applying for nursing school. my end goal was CRNA, that is why my questions were geared towards that as for the legislative question they were asked because I wanted to do VA work to work with veterans but all the articles I found were negative about CRNAs and anesthesiologists in the VA. That is the only reason those questions were asked if you know what you want to end up as you might as well know the end goal, and if there were going to be a lot of those issues I didn’t want to deal with that. As for the group you are referring to as me shadowing I’m not sure who all is still there as I shadowed between 04-06. And the hospital would have the record of it as the patient had to sign the consent to let me watch his back surgery in the operating room. I was very disappointed in their approach to your questions about me and it only further fueled my thoughts about this role. The accusations were proven in a court of law to be false and I don’t think that someone should be judged by a accusation especially when they proved it to false. You have my email I would be more than happy To discuss further. I’m not one for publicly bashing someone and I have had enough of that as you can imagine. I mean no harm or hate towards you or anyone else, If you want to talk further about this please shoot me an email. I will not reach out to you given the circumstances.

To wrap up, CRNA was a long time goal for me it started when I worked in hospital but life takes us all down several paths, mine was a winding path that eventually led me to the conclusion that i was not in a position to stop working and spend that much time away from my family to obtain this degree. I changed my major last year from medical to business and moved on. To each their own. We all have to figure out what’s best for us and our families. I decided CRNA was not in my future. Have a good day and I wish all the new potential CRNAs the best of Luck

JSchmittCRNA, APRN, CRNA · Jul 31, 2019

4 minutes ago, Oklahoma 1 said:
It was you I spoke with, and yes there were a lot of questions that were asked, and I already knew the path to nursing because I started out this path, and was just a few classes shy of applying for nursing school. my end goal was CRNA, that is why my questions were geared towards that as for the legislative question they were asked because I wanted to do VA work to work with veterans but all the articles I found were negative about CRNAs and anesthesiologists in the VA. That is the only reason those questions were asked if you know what you want to end up as you might as well know the end goal, and if there were going to be a lot of those issues I didn’t want to deal with that. As for the group you are referring to as me shadowing I’m not sure who all is still there as I shadowed between 04-06. And the hospital would have the record of it as the patient had to sign the consent to let me watch his back surgery in the operating room. I was very disappointed in their approach to your questions about me and it only further fueled my thoughts about this role. The accusations were proven in a court of law to be false and I don’t think that someone should be judged by a accusation especially when they proved it to false. You have my email I would be more than happy To discuss further. I’m not one for publicly bashing someone and I have had enough of that as you can imagine. I mean no harm or hate towards you or anyone else, If you want to talk further about this please shoot me an email. I will not reach out to you given the circumstances.
To wrap up, CRNA was a long time goal for me it started when I worked in hospital but life takes us all down several paths, mine was a winding path that eventually led me to the conclusion that i was not in a position to stop working and spend that much time away from my family to obtain this degree. I changed my major last year from medical to business and moved on. To each their own. We all have to figure out what’s best for us and our families. I decided CRNA was not in my future. Have a good day and I wish all the new potential CRNAs the best of Luck

Well this makes more sense now. You and I have spoken at length, I did not realize this was you again, all I saw was the unprofessional statement and felt it needed to be addressed because I am not unprofessional. So I don’t mean to bring up all of it again. But makes sense because this is the only time this situation has occurred. My OANA state peer advisor and non-board member was the first CRNA you emailed those questions to and she immediately raised the red flag to me and forwarded your questions. So your interaction had already been flagged to me before you and I ever talked. I was brought in to investigate your questions. So you weren’t starting with me from a place of trust, I was brought in by our board to research you and ensure you were not working with our opposition. There was over a million dollars spent in anti-APRN propaganda by the opposition this spring and we have a duty to CRNAs to protect them first and foremost. Again like I’ve said in the past to you, my job is to protect CRNAs and the mission of OANA and put the feelings of non-CRNAs after that. Our interaction with you was one of a set unique circumstances. Had you spoke to me first before reaching out to a non board member about sensitive legislative issues the conversation probably would have taken a completely different course. Every communication between you and myself was discussed first with my Vice President and my board because we had our guard up very high during legislative session. Again like I’ve said to you before, I wish you all the best of luck in pursuing your goals.