Out of curiosity, what encroachment are dental anesthesiologists facing? No really, I want to know. Because on the medical side, there is A LOT. I would know, I have worked alongside anesthesiologists and CRNA's for the last several years.
Say what? I've mostly only worked in hospital settings, but most specialties in medicine do not offer a "better" lifestyle than dentistry. If you've never had an exhausting job that didn't require late shifts and weekend shifts, or call, then yes, dentistry may seem like it's not a good gig... because you just may not know any better, you've never had a crappy lifestyle job to begin with. But if you have some perspective on life regarding working in healthcare (usually gained by working said shifts), then I don't think that medicine offers a better lifestyle than dentistry.
This. I've never met a dental anesthesiologist, but on the medical side, they don't have the nice hours like dentists do.
And all this talk about CRNA as a career option... someone needs to put their foot down and tell you all what a lot of you don't seem to be getting. Everyone looks at CRNA and thinks "okay, this many years of this, this many years of that, and then salary of this, wow that's cool, that could (or could have, in the past) been an option for me..." when that's missing most of the big picture. It's not like going to medical school or dental school and then choosing that specialty. No. You have to go to nursing school FIRST, and be a NURSE FIRST. If you cannot tolerate this fact, then you can't choose CRNA as a viable option. And not just any nurse, you have to be in critical care. This is grueling, back-breaking, emotionally wrenching work a lot of the time, no matter how you look at it. And if you're a brand-new nurse, you more than likely will be working nights. And every other weekend. And some of them take call. And let's not even get into the specialties of ICU that are out there, like surgical or CVICU. Let's pick a medical ICU, shall we? You come in at 7 pm on a Friday night, ready to work the weekend. The nurse on day shift gives you report on your patient. "Dude they've been circling the drain all day, vital signs are this and that, and family wants them to be a full code. Deuces, new guy/gal" and they up and promptly leave. The next 12 hours you don't get a chance to sit, drink a sip of water, piss, or do remotely anything other than a futile attempt to keep this patient alive longer than they have to be, running codes here and there, breaking their ribs as you do compressions, family's there still wanting you and the team to keep going. It is now 7 am on a Saturday morning. Patient didn't survive. You now have to spend an extra 2 hours charting all the things you did, and the dead body paperwork hospitals require you to do. It is 9 am, you are exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and you got to go home to sleep and come back again later tonight for another round. And you have to do this for 1-2 years, 3-5 years at certain competitive CRNA programs, just to have a shot to get in. "Oh that's okay, Chief's Pineapple, I'll work in a PICU instead for my nursing experience to get into CRNA school" you tell me. Your first day off orientation you get a baby for a patient, who's mom is anti-vax, and has spread whooping cough to her baby. Hearing those coughs as that baby can't even breathe... they have videos on YouTube, if you can even stomach watching it. This is life in the ICU. For medicine or dentistry, you can have no healthcare experience whatsoever, and go to college and then become a physician or dentist. Not as a CRNA. You have to do critical care nursing. If you can't do this, you can't do CRNA. Rant over.