Why Have Both?
Like many career fields and practices, general anesthesia came about to solve a problem. This universal problem that becomes an extreme issue when someone cuts into your bones. Pain is this problem, and anesthesia is the solution. Anesthesia, in its many forms, has been around almost as long as recorded history tells us, with nurses administering the anesthesia under surgeons’ supervision. In my experience talking with doctors and nurses, I have gotten an overall feeling that the game is changing a little bit in the medical field. Doctors are liable for so much that all they do is paperwork now. There is so much technology that can tell us more than we thought imaginable just a few years ago. This allows physicians to be very specialized. Talking to a nurse anesthetist was the reason why I want to become one. I usually tell people what he told me when people ask what a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) is. That is, a CRNA is basically an anesthesiologist that didn't have to go to medical school. As a generalization, the anesthesiologist has more liability and tells the CRNA what to do.
CRNAs are certified to do nearly all of what anesthesiologist can, yet they need to be supervised in many instances. Multiple problems could be solved with the progressively complicated system if CRNAs could work independently. Although some may say that anesthesiologists’ specialties are crucial to the medical field, Nurse Anesthetists should replace anesthesiologists because student debts from medical school would drop drastically, it would give CRNAs opportunities to utilize all of their training, thus reducing the redundancy of having two such similar specialties in the same workplace. It would also eliminate a level of potential miscommunication between physicians working together to improve and save lives.
