I have a question for my friend Copro 😀 :

Yeah, that's a stretch.
I usually have a very good memory and I am almost certain that a while ago you said that you were a CRNA before you became a physician, am I just imagining things or is that really what you said?
By the way no offense intended and you don't even have to answer my question if you don't like it.
I was not a nurse nor, therefore, a CRNA before I became a physician. However, I did not, like many other people who have become physicians and then anesthesiologists, take the "traditional" path (i.e. high school, college, med school, residency) to get where I am today.
I do personally know
three physicans, two of whom happen to be anesthesiologists, and one of whom was, in fact, a CRNA before going to med school. The one who was a CRNA is a current resident colleague, and is in her late 30's. Of the other two, both are attendings and were "just" nurses... one is an anesthesiologist and the other is an ED physician.
All three say now that "they didn't know what they didn't know" before becoming physicians, and that the difference in knowledge, training, and responsibility is vastly different and requires a far higher degree of responsibility and decision-making than they could've even remotely understood before going to med school. But, each (in my observation) has also uniquely brought their "nursing" perspective to their practice, and (in my opinion) sometimes focus on minutiae that isn't always necessarily germane in the "big picture".
I once asked the "former" CRNA why she would give up being a CRNA and go this difficult route, especially when she already had what so many people want. She told me that she thought she would be able to - and I quote - "
fix the rigged system from the inside" after completing her degree and training. Upon becoming a physician and entering residency, though, it became abundantly clear to her the number of assumptions she had made during her nursing career about... well... everything she did but didn't immediately understand... that, before getting the training we get in med school, it didn't really make a difference. Now, with her additional medical knowledge, she realizes just how wrong she was. Nonetheless, she is, I can say without a doubt, one of the true stand-outs in our residency class.
Thanks for asking.
-copro