Educational background
As accordance to the US system, nurse anesthetics are first required to have completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing or Bachelor’s degree. Secondly, they must be registered and licensed nurses. Candidates are further required to have a minimum of one fully year experience as a practicing nurse in a surgical intensive care unit or a medical intensive care unit. Following the prescribe experience the candidates apply to a Council on Accreditation (COA) which is a program for accreditation of nurse-anesthesia (United States, 2004).
Anesthetics education is offered on doctoral degree or masters degree in (Nurse Anesthesia Practice). The education program period varies from 24 to 36 months but the standardized period is 28 months (Mirr, 2006). The Council on Accreditation is the anesthesia educational curricula governing body as it serves to that students are develop a strong professional, scientific and clinical foundation for safe anesthetic clinical practice including the group process understanding because the health profession is more perfectly practiced in groups or teams when comes to technical duties like surgeries.
Certifications
As in accordance to the US, it is a requirement that all nurses are to be licensed in all states. Upon meeting education requirements, it is a requirement for candidates to sit for the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNA) examination through the National Board of Certification and Recertification of Nurse Anesthetists (NBCRNA). It is further, necessary that for the sake of credentials maintenance, the practicing CRNAs must participate in a throughout career education for improvement of skills and keeping pace with the advancing service delivery in health sector. For assurance of credential and benchmark meeting clearance of doubts, the certification and recertification governing board the NBCRNA is an independent not for profit incorporated organization thus preventing any conflict of interest with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetics (AANA) (Henrichs, 2009).
Experience
Admission to majority of the anesthetist school educational programs requires that, at least one must have a minimum of one year in the health professional. More specifically, the highly demanded experience is an acute care setting nursing, preferably clinical care or surgery. CRNAs require a completion of 25000 hours of training on clinical and administer. The approximation is about 850 anesthetics as in accordance to the (AANA). As part of training, anesthetists are required to exhibit assertive communication, critical skills, teaching and organizational skills. These skills requirement, in addition to personal attributes like compassion and patience are necessary for clear communication with patients and group members in the whole profession and place of work (Novotny, 2006). The experience requirement of CRNAs more specifically the assertive communication development is purpose for freedom of expression and decision making under pressure since the working environment for them is of pressuring issues.
Roles and responsibilities of an anesthetist
An anesthetist has different roles that govern her daily works in the hospital. They include performance of pre-anesthetic screening to the patients. This includes physical evaluation and analyzing of the patient’s interviews and the final document research (Dennison, 2012)
The nurse also selects and prescribes the post-anesthesia medications or offers the treatments to patients. It is precisely the nurse’s responsibility to evaluate the patients’ post-surgical responses. The nurse should also take the appropriate corrective actions that give a chance to the patients. Alternatively, request consultation if complication arise, the nurse also has the capability to discharge the patients from post –post anesthesia.
The nurse also has a legal responsibility to monitor the patient’s response to medical treatment that includes the skin colors, pupil dilation, blood pressure, pulse and rate of the patient (Mirr, 2006).
The nurse also carries a responsibility of responding to the emergencies that arise by providing airway management like administration of drugs or fluids via the advanced cardiac life support techniques available. In case the main doctor in session is not available, and then the nurses on session will serve the patient as if they were the doctors themselves (Dennison, 2012).
The nurses have the responsibilities of checking their patients’ medical histories in order to predict on the progress of their patients to determine their response to treatments. This tasks leads forward to another responsibility by the nurses of developing an aesthesia care plan. This plan systematically how the patient will be receiving treatments, at what venue, how and who will be administering the medicine to the patient. On the same point, it is the nurse who cleans the equipment used in the anesthetics treatments. She ensures that the items are fully sterilized to kill all forms of viruses or bacteria that might cause the spread of the disease to another incoming patient. On the same point, the anesthetist nurse will need have the operational equipment (Henrichs, 2009)
Place of work
The anesthetist nurse is free to work at any part of the world provided she has the qualification to prove so. Many nurses start with working at major health care facilities as they slowly increase on the skills and working efficiency of their work.
Average nationwide salaries
The aesthetic nurses are medium income earners. After carrying out a research on the income earning of the anesthetic nurses, it results showed that the highest paid nurse received a total of $12 per hour. This totals to maximum around $60 earning per day making it not among the best ever.
References
Dennison, R., & Prevost, S. S. (2012). Future of advanced registered nursing practice. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders/Elsevier.
Guido, G. W. (2010). Legal & ethical issues in nursing. Boston: Pearson.
Hamric, A. B., Spross, J. A., Hanson, C. M., & Hamric, A. B. (2005). Advanced practice nursing: An integrative approach. St. Louis: Saunders.
Henrichs, B., Thompson, J., & American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (2009). A resource for nurse anesthesia educators. Park Ridge, IL: AANA Pub.
Mirr, J. M., & Zwygart-Stauffacher, M. (2006). Advanced practice nursing: Core concepts for professional role development. New York: Springer Pub. Co.
Novotny, J. (2006). 101 careers in nursing. New York: Springer Pub. Co.
United States (2004). Be the nursing professional you always wanted to be: As a nurse anesthetist on the Army Reserve health care team. Washington, D.C.?: The Reserve.
