What the future holds?

Roland · Aug 10, 2005

CRNA pay like anything else is largely a function of the Law of supply and demand. Furthermore, like all fields (including the larger field of nursing), nurse anesthesia it is cyclical and will without a doubt have "cycles" where jobs are relatively scarce. The day may come where the average automechanic earns more than the average CRNA (this is not so far fetched as one might think given the exponential increase in the complexity of new vehicles requiring ever more highly specialized training). On the other hand this would be true of any field that one aspired to enter (for example my dad wanted me to be an optometrist because he said it was really good money with iron clad job security, unfortunately he didn't anticipate RK/excimer laser surgery et al). All one can do is to do your homework, work hard, be flexible, and hope for the best. Even, in the unlikely event that it became difficult or impossible to obtain employment as a CRNA there are a plethora of other advanced practice nursing fields that could be accessed with a few years of extra work. Even now there is a wide disparity in CRNA pay between different regions of the country. For example take a look at the CRNA job postings on http://www.gasjobs.com for say Texas and New York or New Jersey. You will see that on average the Texas CRNA job listings are at least 20% higher than the East coast listings (and what's more the cost of living is probably 20%+ lower in Texas to boot).

I know a lot of people who want to be CRNAs in the future, even kids in my daughter's high school class want to go for "big bucks" .They do not know yet how difficult it is to pursue the dream... But what if it happenes, and many people will actually try to get into anesthesia field? Are there enough jobs for all of us?