Posted by CRNAphD on May 7, 2009, 12:07 am, in reply to "Re: An Angry CRNA"
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Sorry but this is honestly pathetic. I love the critisim that is provided by people who have never done nursing their entire life or at least very few. If you did you would know ICU nursing is not about wiping asses, but ventilator control, hemodynamic monitoring, control of vasoactive drips. Now lets be honest we can take any semi intellegent guy and train them in anesthesia and they will do just fine. Pre-op versed, robinul, op- propofol, sux, tube, gas there you go. As any anesthetist in this room could note that anesthesia is 95% routine and 5 % emergency. AA's may be trained in anesthesia by reading a book and doing clinicals, but I will tell you doing clinicals for nursing does not make you a seasoned nurse coming out of school. 3-5 years of experience as a charge nurse who's sole duty was to run to every code gives you the ability to handle emergencies and act with some independence when making a dicision on the care of the patient coding. Now take that experience on top of the masters in medical pharmocology and physiology I have and then go to CRNA school. Now tell me how the AA program has equip. you with that level of knowledge. Now totally exclude my masters degree and lets focus on my experience. I ran 70% of codes with no doc and stopped counting after 150+ in my 5 years of TICU. Now please I know all of you have excusses like I didn't take the MCAT, which is just a standardized test but if you want that as your one up on me then fine, but lets compare everything else or the "ass wiping" experience (As you phrase) and compare that to you. I do not doubt that many if not most AA's are very intellegent people and capable of providing great anesthesia 95% of the time and during minor situations, but when something goes terribly wrong do you keep quiet or call for help. Lets ask yourself why you call for help... Is it because you have to.. Yes partially... Is it because the situation is out of your hands... Absolutly. I know you are probably nieve enough to think a CRNA would not call for help if needed, but in my independent practice I only called for help once from the other CRNA because I needed an extra set of hands to deliver blood to a patient when the surgeon cut the hepatic artery and couldn't find it. So lets recap Nursing experience, charge nurse 150+ codes, master in medical pharmolocogy and physiology, soon to be phD in electrophysiology, 3 year CRNA program, 4960 clinical hours to an AA, with biological science background for some very few in a medical profession previously and 2 year program no prior experience in emergency or critical care over long period of time or crisis managment in ICU. Sorry guys your not equivilant, you are great providers, but not the same or else during the 28 years or so of your existance would have blossomed, but it hasn't. Like many of you I am tired of this argument and the previous CRNA spoke idotically, but was not completely false. I am happy with who I am and my profession as a CRNA and don't regret one day of it. I worked in big urban hospitals with majority MDA and was allowed complete independence besides a pre clical evaluation I had to dictate to my boss other than that my decisions were mine and that is what I invested in my education for and what my education gave me in return. Yes there is always going to be a political agenda between MD, CRNA, and AA, but don't let that cloud the facts. If any of you can honestly compare your experience or knowledge and education level of mine please chime in other than that don't compare yourself to me. I think the degree of a masters in anesthesiology has clouded the head of several AA's into forgetting the last "A" to their title "assistant". That will always be appart of your title and is the biggest factor and difference between the CRNA and AA. Now why don't we all just get along and be happy with our choice to do what we want to do in life and quit fighting with each other. Sharing knowledge between each other would only better us, but instead you guys create a forum to which is dedicated to b###hing about CRNA's instead of something educational. That concept echoes another difference between AA's and CRNA's.
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