Nurse Anesthetist Administer anesthesia, monitor patient's vital signs, and oversee patient recovery from anesthesia. May assist anesthesiologists, surgeons, other physicians, or dentists. Must be registered nurses who have specialized graduate education.
Nurse Anesthetist is Also Know as
In different settings, Nurse Anesthetist is titled as
- Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA)
- Nurse Anesthetist
- Staff Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (Staff CRNA)
- Staff Nurse Anesthetist
Education and Training of Nurse Anesthetist
Nurse Anesthetist is categorized in Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Nurse Anesthetist
Extensive skill, knowledge, and experience are needed for these occupations. Many require more than five years of experience. For example, surgeons must complete four years of college and an additional five to seven years of specialized medical training to be able to do their job.
Education Required for Nurse Anesthetist
Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).
Degrees Related to Nurse Anesthetist
- Bachelor in Nurse Anesthetist
- Associate Degree Courses in Nurse Anesthetist
- Masters Degree Courses in Nurse Anesthetist
Training Required for Nurse Anesthetist
Employees may need some on-the-job training, but most of these occupations assume that the person will already have the required skills, knowledge, work-related experience, and/or training.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Nurse Anesthetist in different industries are
- Anesthesiologists
- Anesthesiologist Assistants
- Nurse Practitioners
- Critical Care Nurses
- Registered Nurses
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Surgical Assistants
- Clinical Nurse Specialists
- Nurse Midwives
- Physician Assistants
- Paramedics
- Emergency Medicine Physicians
- Emergency Medical Technicians
- Acute Care Nurses
- Cardiologists
- Pediatric Surgeons
- Respiratory Therapists
- Obstetricians and Gynecologists
- General Internal Medicine Physicians
- Surgical Technologists
What Do Nurse Anesthetist do?
- Administer post-anesthesia medications or fluids to support patients' cardiovascular systems.
- Evaluate patients' post-surgical or post-anesthesia responses, taking appropriate corrective actions or requesting consultation if complications occur.
- Perform pre-anesthetic screenings, including physical evaluations and patient interviews, and document results.
- Select and prescribe post-anesthesia medications or treatments to patients.
- Select, order, or administer pre-anesthetic medications.
- Discharge patients from post-anesthesia care.
- Perform or evaluate the results of diagnostic tests, such as radiographs (x-rays) and electrocardiograms (EKGs).
- Manage patients' airway or pulmonary status, using techniques such as endotracheal intubation, mechanical ventilation, pharmacological support, respiratory therapy, and extubation.
- Monitor patients' responses, including skin color, pupil dilation, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, ventilation, or urine output, using invasive and noninvasive techniques.
- Perform or manage regional anesthetic techniques, such as local, spinal, epidural, caudal, nerve blocks and intravenous blocks.
- Prepare prescribed solutions and administer local, intravenous, spinal, or other anesthetics, following specified methods and procedures.
- Respond to emergency situations by providing airway management, administering emergency fluids or drugs, or using basic or advanced cardiac life support techniques.
- Select, order, or administer anesthetics, adjuvant drugs, accessory drugs, fluids or blood products as necessary.
- Assess patients' medical histories to predict anesthesia response.
- Develop anesthesia care plans.
- Obtain informed consent from patients for anesthesia procedures.
- Select, prepare, or use equipment, monitors, supplies, or drugs for the administration of anesthetics.
- Calibrate and test anesthesia equipment.
- Disassemble and clean anesthesia equipment.
- Insert arterial catheters or perform arterial punctures to obtain arterial blood samples.
- Insert peripheral or central intravenous catheters.
- Instruct nurses, residents, interns, students, or other staff on topics such as anesthetic techniques, pain management and emergency responses.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in nursing.
- Request anesthesia equipment repairs, adjustments, or safety tests.
Qualities of Good Nurse Anesthetist
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Tools Used by Nurse Anesthetist
- Anesthesia masks
- Arterial line catheters
- Automated external defibrillators AED
- Bilevel positive airway pressure BiPAP ventilators
- Bispectral index monitors BIS
- Blood collection syringes
- Blood collection tubes
- Calibrated vaporizers
- Capnographs
- Cardiac monitors
- Digital anesthesia machines
- Electrocardiography EKG machines
- Electronic blood pressure cuffs
- Electronic thermometer probes
- End tidal carbon dioxide monitors
- Endotracheal ET tubes
- Epidural block equipment trays
- Epidural catheters
- Esophageal intubation detectors
- Fiberoptic bronchoscopes
- Gas anesthesia administration machines
- Hypodermic syringes
- Intermittent positive pressure breathing IPPB ventilators
- Intravenous IV administration equipment
- Intravenous IV infusion pumps
- Invasive hemodynamic pressure monitors
- Laptop computers
- Laryngeal mask airways LMA
- Magill forceps
- Mechanical stethoscopes
- Multiple lumen central line catheters
- Nasal airways
- Oropharyngeal airways
- Oxygen concentrators
- Oxygen delivery masks
- Oxygen flowmeters
- Patient controlled analgesia PCA pumps
- Peripheral nerve stimulators
- Personal computers
- Precordial stethoscopes
- Pretracheal stethoscopes
- Protective face shields
- Pulmonary artery catheters
- Pulse oximeters
- Safety goggles
- Surgical gloves
- Swan Ganz artery catheters
- Tourniquets
- Tracheotomy sets
Technology Skills required for Nurse Anesthetist
- AetherPalm InfusiCalc
- Allscripts Professional EHR
- Amkai AmkaiCharts
- Bizmatics PrognoCIS EMR
- Cerner Millennium
- ChartWare EMR
- Drug database software
- e-MDs software
- eClinicalWorks EHR software
- EDImis Anesthesia Manager
- Epic Systems
- GE Healthcare Centricity EMR
- MEDITECH software
- Medscribbler Enterprise
- MicroFour PracticeStudio.NET EMR
- Microsoft Word
- NextGen Healthcare Information Systems EMR
- Skyscape AnesthesiaDrugs
- SOAPware EMR
- StatCom Patient Flow Logistics Enterprise Suite
- SynaMed EMR
- Texas Medical Software SpringCharts EMR