TXANESTHETIST said:
Maybe it's my inexperience speaking but how is having Internal medicine, OBGYN and Pediatric medicine experience an extra "insurance" for providing anesthesia. Not like we are prescribing anything long-term post op, etc.
I'll throw in my two cents on this question: Having experiences in subspecialties as the decision maker and in making correct diagnoses gives you an understanding of the pathologies that are affecting your surgical patients as an anesthesiologist.
When I have a patient come to the OR with carcinoid syndrome, Treacher Collins, Down's Syndrome, multiple myeloma, bipolar disorder, endometriosis, etc., I know what the conditions are, know the medicines being used to treat them, know the implications of what the condition and medications will have on anesthesia, and above all else have the direct experience of having seen, diagnosed, and treated the condition. Each time you experience the difficulty in determining and correctly diagnosing a simple or complex pathological process, you have added another invaluable facet to your decision making process and skills. That complex, intensive, AND diverse training is what makes a physician what he or she is: a mosaic of all of the experiences they receive through undergraduate, medical, and residency training. At the minimum, 12 years of higher education with the last eight covering EVERY discipline of medicine, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, anatomy, etc.
That is why physicians earn the right to be the leaders of their fields. They have earned their stripes by making it through training that is both grueling and rewarding, knowing that every decision they make can mean life or death for a patient. It is the single most motivating factor in every physician's training that makes them learn as much as they possibly can.
As to the designations of student and resident, this is more than just a semantics issue. It goes toward trying to imply a higher level of training comparable to a physician resident. Why else would the SRNA designation be dropped when the training provided has not changed? It is a precedent that is going to be severely tested if or when the AANA tries to push its clinical doctorate training:
". . . in the American Journal of Nursing (Volume 105(5), May 2005, pp 28-29) that they are entertaining the idea of adding a
semester of study to CRNA programs and granting a clinical doctorate. According to Frank Maziarski, MS, CLNC, CRNA, president of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists."
ONE SEMESTER of additional training will now give you a doctorate degree? Not only that, but ANYONE in CRNA training can simply sign up for it under that plan. You don't have to be a good SRNA, you just have to sign up for it. What then will CRNA's call themselves? CRDNA's?
This is a serious question. It is a reflection of the effort to minimize training and equalize the PERCEPTION of the training and abilities of health care providers across the spectrum. This isn't unique to anesthesiology. Ophthamology is experiencing the same issues with optometrists trying to push for surgical rights. Heck, even chiropractors are pushing for expanded treatment scopes with techniques best utilized under the perspective of an orthopedist or pain management specialist.
When I read people's attempt to belittle or minimize physician training, I can't help but wonder what this will all lead to and what patients will think of it.
