CRNA vs. Anesthesiologist

Recently, in the medical blogging world, there's been a lot of chatter about Nurse Practitioners, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, and "Doctor" Nurses versus actual MDs or DOs. I do not really know what I think about all of this. I have received care from NPs on multiple occasions and never had any problem with it. Additionally, a close family friend of ours is a CRNA, and she certainly seems competent, like she takes her job very seriously. That said, there's a lot of concern that to the common healthcare consumer, NPs are starting to look more and more like MDs or DOs. Indeed, there are a lot of nurses who are working very hard in the fields of primary care, who are taking on more and more of the responsibilities previously held by doctors. It's happening with PAs too. This is due to the fact that most med students look at their massive amount of debt and think, "There's no way I can pay this off and go into primary care." Also, anyone who gets into medicine for patient contact may find that lacking in family practice, where Medicare reimburses the physician for 15 minutes of his/her time. Yikes.

I am too inexperienced to provide much insight in this whole nurse practictioner versus doctor thing. I do know that I would prefer to be put under by an anesthesiologist, but can't quite identify why. The fellow at The Chloroform Rag (a first year anesthesiology resident) provides some interesting thoughts on this. He is understandably perplexed by the fact that some CRNAs see themselves as being just as competent as a doctor. What I find interesting, though, is that he is just now grappling with an issue that has plauged family practitioners for quite a while. This is not a new issue, unique to anesthesiologists. Frankly, it is one issue that I'd like to avoid. As such, I'll probably be eschewing fields such as family practice in favor of ones like psychiatry, pediatrics, internal meds. In the meantime, I've been being both entertained and horrified by the hubris of some of the posters in the message board for this article. The article by itself is interesting, if somewhat insubstantial. The comments are where the real entertainment is.

On that note, it is far too hot here. I am going to go drink seltzer water and think about all the things that I ought to be doing.