Question for AAs

Disclaimer: I am not an AA.

Anesthesiologist Assistants is a growing field. The anesthesiologists will love and respect you as long as you work hard and know your stuff, and it will be extremely easy for you to find a job. I'm pretty sure that AA is a lot like PA people where they are deciding to apply to medical school but eventually decide against it. However, they still want to be working in healthcare using the premed classes they built up in undergrad and the [X]Assistant graduate programs fit the bill.

Don't worry about the state licenses. More legislation is being worked through on a continual basis to open up more states to AA practice. The goal is to get AAs licensed in all 50 states, so the field is only going to get bigger and better.

 

Current students in all five programs are split between those who are looking at it as a 2nd career and those who come straight out of school.

I've been in it 28 years and have no regrets. AA's work in a wide variety of anesthesia care team practices - small-town hospitals to big-city tertiary referall hospitals. They do big cases and small cases, from 2 minute ear tubes on healthy babies to heads and hearts on the sickest patients you can imagine.

AA's are well-respected in their practices, and the demand is increasing, even as the number of graduates increases each year. Although states are added slowly, the number is increasing each year, with 5-6 new states in the last five years.

PM me if you want more info.