Background For more than a decade, both the United States (US) and the Netherlands have been struggling to control health care costs. The demand for nurse anesthetists, or in the US, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNA), has increased in both countries due to the increased substitution of nurse anesthetists for anesthesiologists in surgery, with the goal of reducing health care costs....

BACKGROUND Pain management is a critical but complex issue for the relief of acute pain, particularly for postoperative pain and severe pain in cancer patients. It also plays important roles in promoting quality of care. The introduction of pain management decision support systems (PM-DSS) is considered a potential solution for addressing the complex problems encountered in pain management. Thi...

The Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs appointed a Standards Revision Task Force to develop new accreditation standards. After 3 years of research and development (2011-2013) by the task force, the Council approved the first entry-level Practice Doctorate Standards and the first voluntary Post-graduate CRNA Fellowship Standards in January 2014. This defining momen...

The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Infection Control Task Force applied a rigorous evidence-based process to the revision of the Infection Control Guide for Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists. This article details the necessity of a current Professional Practice infection control document, including an expansion of infection control and prevention literature since the last revi...

A 1992 General Accounting Office (GAO) study on costs of anesthesia found that anesthetics administered by anesthesia care teams (ACTs) were more costly than those administered by Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) or anesthesiologists practicing alone. In 1994, Medicare implemented a single payment system in response to the GAO report and recommendations by the Physician Payment R...

The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Practice Committee applies a standardized evidence-based process to the development and revision of practice-related documents and member resources. This article highlights recent Practice Committee work related to the revision and development of new materials for the Professional Practice Manual for the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. Spec...

Nurse anesthesia programs strive to minimize attrition due to academic reasons and maximize student success. The authors examined the evidence for evaluating applicants to nurse anesthesia programs that may help predict success in the program and on the National Certification Examination for Nurse Anesthetists. A search strategy guided gathering of evidence from peer-reviewed journals. Evidence...

The total numbers of Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) in the United States and members of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) have risen to an all-time high. However, the percentage of CRNAs who are AANA members has been slowly declining since 2006, particularly among newly certified nurse anesthetists. To develop new strategies to increase and sustain CRNA memb...

Nontechnical skills are critical for good anesthetic practice but are seldom addressed explicitly in clinical training. The purposes of this study were (1) to evaluate the reliability and validity of the observation-based assessment tool Nurse Anaesthetists' Non-Technical Skills system (N-ANTS) and (2) to evaluate the effect of training nurse anesthetist supervisors in the use of N-ANTS. This s...