There is a bill being floated around for the acceptance of AAs in Utah. CRNAs are coming out in droves, not just from Utah, but the country spreading a lot of misinformation. The comments section is wild! As physicians we need to be united in the same cause.
A Utah bill to create a new license for anesthesiologist assistants prompted a debate on Thursday about whether it would serve as an anticompetitive measure for nurse anesthetists, who receive more training, or help fill health care shortages.
www.ksl.com
Funny - they've already turned off the comments on this article. Too many whiny CRNAs disguised as "interested citizens".
I never cease to be amazed at the BS spouted by CRNAs against AAs. I've been hearing it from more than 40 years. It's like a broken record. The arguments and lies never change - just the faces spouting them.
Here's a couple things you never see mentioned...
When did CRNA educational programs start requiring a BSN? Hmmm, not until well into the 90s. Do you know that there are still thousands of CRNAs in practice with nursing diplomas and anesthesia certificates, and NO DEGREE whatsoever, many of whom trained at community hospitals that simply wanted to have a never-ending supply of CRNAs to staff their own ORs?
When did the nurses start granting masters degrees in nurse anesthesia? Hmmmm, also well into the 90s. Why did they do this? Perhaps because AAs were granting a masters degree in anesthesiology starting with the first class in the mid-70s.
Notice that all of the CRNA arguments are amazingly similar, like maybe they're just repeating what they've read or what they've heard and not forming an independent thought? Things like "CRNAs have a minimum of 36 months of ICU "training"" before applying to a CRNA program (the actual requirement is 12 months of critical care, which can be defined by individual programs). Or that "CRNAs have more clinical education than physicians? Hmmmmm - that's because they want to count all four years of nursing school as education, never mind that two full years of that is typically core requirements like English and Introduction to Chemistry for Nursing Students, as well as count any time in the ICU as "education", and THEN want to count their newly expanded fluff DNP degree, which invariably offers absolutely zero additional clinical education from the master's degree level and adds courses along the lines of Statistics for Nurses, Politics 101, and other fluffy coursework to pad that 3rd year. (also available online for those who have a masters degree, so obviously no clinical work there). So they claim they have "at least 10 years of nursing
education" and physicians only have 8 years of medical education. Hmmmm - didn't MDs go to college too, and take actual chemistry and physics and o-chem, etc., etc. and not just introductory core classes?
And of course nurses know SOOOOOO much about AAs because, "oh well, I've never actually worked with one, but I can tell you the "facts" provided by our union, er, professional organizations".
And isn't it interesting that the MD/AA medical direction combination is so expensive, but that same MD/CRNA medical direction combination is not? Or that anesthesia by the MD/AA or CRNA combination is exactly the same cost to the patient as a CRNA only. Hmmmmmm.
It's really a shame - because as least where I am, we can't find enough anesthetists of either type every year to staff our ever-expanding practice. For the foreseeable future, there is going to be plenty of work for all of us - MD, AA, or CRNA, together or separately.
