I do not want to define your scope of practice. If you consider yourselves professionals, then you yourselves must define your scope of practice.
To let anyone else do it for you makes you less than what you want to be.
When the Nurse Anesthetists first got going, the doctors in anesthesia tried to say the practice of anesthesia was the practice of medicine and thus nurse anesthetists should not be doing it. After years of fighting, the state legislatures decided anesthesia is the practice of medicine AND nursing and they both could do it.
Now along come the AAs. Not doctors or nurses. So how can AAs do anesthesia if you do not have a medical or nursing license? The answer is in definitions and the scope of practice.
The irony is both the AANA and the ASA want to define your practice for you for their own benefit, not for yours.
The CRNAs who are opposed to you do not want you around at all. Their first tactic will be to use the legislative process to fence you out. You probably have encountered that already.
On the other side, the MDAs want you around, but want to set it up so that you can never, ever under any circumstances work as independent providers. They want you to be tied to them 100% of the time. Even the name that you are using, "Anesthesiologist Assistant" is part of the program, as how can you be an assistant to an anesthesiologist if none is around?
Back to the CRNAs, if they know they can not fence you out, they will try another tactic. They will try to make the scope of practice for you so limited, it will not be financially beneficial to the MDAs to use you. Expect such things as limitations on doing IVs, intubations, regional anesthesia, proximity of the MDA and etc. You can assist the anesthesiologist doing those procedures by handing him stuff, but you yourselves can not do it. You can sit doing a case but the MDA must be in the same room, etc. With such restrictions, they hope to discourage the MDAs from using you.
BOTH groups do share one common point in regards to AAs. They both have an absolute horror of you being able to ever do something independently.
Neither wants a third group that can "take their jobs" even if their actions deny anesthesia care to the smaller facilities. With the anesthesia shortage only going to get worse, that view will deny care to a lot of people.
My advice in this chain is make sure YOU define your scope of practice because only YOU have your interests first. (But being able to stick up for society as a whole would also be a good point. If you can show the AANA and the ASA are failing to bring in the number of providers needed for the entire nation, you can go a long way in getting yourselves in.)
I would also advise you to consider getting another name. "Anesthesiologist Assistant" implies a secondary role to another provider, one that you may someday want (or have) to outgrow to meet the demands of society.
((Coming up with a new name could be fun. How about:
Anesthesia Life Supporter?
Anesthesia Life Support Specialist?
Anesthesia Support Specialist?
Anesthesia Support Practitioner?
Anesthetizer? (This one was used long ago but you still find it in some of the older practice acts.)
Anaesthetist? (British spelling.)
Primary Anesthesia Provider? (meaning the one who sits at the head of the table during the case. I do not think the MDAs would like this one.)
Anything but "technician" as that implies someone who knows how to do something but not necessarily knowing WHY he does it that way.
Anyway, good luck and hang in there. The AANA and ASA are not monolithic voting blocks nor are practice laws engraved in stone.
