History of Nurse Anesthesia Practice
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) working in collaboration with surgeons, physician anesthesiologists, and other qualified healthcare professionals administer more than 32 million anesthetics to patients each year in the United States, according to the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) 2009 Practice Profile Survey. CRNAs practice in every setting in which anesthesia is delivered: traditional hospital surgical suites and obstetrical delivery rooms; critical access hospitals; ambulatory surgical centers; the offices of dentists, podiatrists, ophthalmologists, plastic surgeons, and pain management specialists; and U.S. military, Public Health Services, and Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare facilities. When a nurse anesthetist administers anesthesia, it is recognized as the practice of nursing; when administered by an anesthesiologist, it is recognized as the practice of medicine. Regardless of whether their educational background is in nursing or medicine, all anesthesia professionals give anesthesia the same way.
According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, anesthesia care is nearly 50 times safer than it was in the 1980s. Numerous outcomes studies have demonstrated that there is no difference in the quality of care provided by CRNAs and their physician counterparts.