Future of Anesthesiology

Hi:

There are probably a "ga-zillion" posts on this topic plus impact of CRNAs etc. I'd do a search and see what comes up. Most people see the specialty getting fairly competitive in 2-3 years. The results of this years match should give a good indication of whats to come. Hope this helps.

M-

 

Anesthesiology has wild swings. Decent paying jobs were hard to come by about 8 years ago, now they are lots of jobs. But sooner or later the market will saturate again (due to a huge number of anesthesia grads) there are about 1100 residents and another 1400 CRNAs coming out each year for the next few years. Will there be enough room in the market for them? Only time will tell. Surgical volume has peaked in the US at around 25 million anesthetics per year. The number of retiring anesthesiologist has declined due to the hot job market and the down stock market.

The hot anesthesia market is NOT an indication of increased surgical demand, but low anesthetist supply. This issue will be resolved in the next couple of cycles.

No one can predict these issues. But you can look at the numbers and make an educated guess. There are about 30,000 MDAs in the US and I believe about 60,000 CRNAs. What you want is the retiring number of anesthesiolgists per year to be equal or greater than the number of grads (about 1100 per year) to have a good job market, while maintaining an equal number of sugrical cases.

Will this happen? No one knows. You must choose a career based on what you would like to do for FREE, and hope everything else works out well. That is, do what you like and pray for the best.

The only concern I would have would be surgical volume. It has leveled off after about 10 years of 10% plus growth. Where will it be in the next 10 years? That is the golden question I would be asking.

 

John90210,

As of 1998 there were approximately 35000 anesthesiologists and 28500 nurse anesthetists. These numbers would be up somewhat now, but not by much. The numbers are from a paper on manpower issues in anesthesia. Dr. Tremper, Chair of Anesthesia at U. Mich, was the committee chair of the summary. I can get you the reference if you wish.

 

My apologies for being wrong with the CRNA numbers. Thanks.

 

With an aging population who will need more surgeries, more pain medication on the horizon, and more interventional pain procedures, I believe the future is bright, even with CRNAs. CRNAs don't want to train long enough to do what an MDAs do. So there will be more oversight and complex cases for MDAs. The trial lawyer buck stops at the MDA.