Posted by Josh BSN/RN MSA/LAc on December 16, 2008, 6:51 pm, in reply to "Re: Colorado AAs"
Anesthesiologists represent the gold standard because they are the most highly trained. Thus, if you want to compare the characteristics of how another group delivers anesthesia, you compare it to the standard.
Plus anesthesiologists are responsible for the vast majority of anesthesia research, whereas nursing research tends to focus on the qualitative assessment of a patient population's feelings on surgery or some crap.
As for actual research being done, I'll have to actually see it. Nurse practitioners like to quote incredibly poor studies to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness, such as one where the NP's were supervised, which is similar to a CRNA study I saw.