Education/Training vs. Fraudulent Advertising
The above is the actual educational and training differences between an MD/DO and a CRNA. Amazingly, somehow just pointing this out makes you a mean person. It’s just facts but how dare we display them? Below is an advertisement from the CRNA lobby.
Can you see how they confabulate and lie in order to “prove” they are equal to doctors? This is what they tell lawmakers. This is what they tell the public. And somehow doctors are the bad guys for defending themselves.
I love how they just nixed the value of a college education. Unfortunately I needed it back in the latter half of the 20th century in order to get into medical school. I guess that was my (no I was a minor, so I will blame my parents’) mistake. In this day and age, maybe we can create more fast track college/med school programs…..sure would save money and time and would help alleviate this physician shortage.
Also, here locally we have anesthesia techs……I do not really know what they are capable of doing (providing anesthesia, I suppose), and the level of supervision would likely be up to the “guy” who has the most to lose (not considering the patient- their life) but I guess it is some kind of vocational program…..my ASC director told me that they would be allowed to care for stable patients who are under general anesthesia. In these parts CRNA’s go for top dollar…around 250K plus benefits. Once the patient is intubated, and the drugs are running, these new anesthesia machines are like robots, with constant monitoring, and I believe they can even do some kind of pain stimulation and detect patient response to determine if more gas or drugs are needed…….. These techs are not even nurses so I guess they will have a low wage starting salary and no big union behind them for quite some time (and there will be a lot of excess overeducated anesthesia personnel on the sidelines, but not actively employed. And the shortage of surgeons will help this situation. So get rid of the docs (except that one position- Director of Anesthesia Services- who can even be offshore, “monitoring” who knows how many patients in real time like robotic surgeons can do), decrease the number of CRNA’s, and this will be a hospital administrator’s dream. One day CMS may wake up and realize they are paying too much for anesthesia units….
Unbelievable gaslighting. “…CRNA’S are required to have critical care experience…”
Being a Go-fer as an ICU nurse is a far cry from making actual decisions about the care of the critically ill. Nurses are great and very much needed but their education is watered down at best from even the undergraduate years. Several of my old chemistry profs hated teaching what they called “sandbox chemistry” for the nurses.