Physician-led anesthesia is safe anesthesia

Many people, even those who work in the operating room every day, take safe anesthesia care for granted.  There has been growing pressure recently to abandon the team model and remove physician anesthesiologists’ supervision of nurse anesthetists with the latest threat coming from within Veterans Affairs (VA) health care.  For our veterans, our heroes and arguably some of the most medically complex patients, having both physician anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists working together as a team makes sense.
Having a team with members who train differently and have different perspectives can only benefit the patient; physician anesthesiologists draw on their medical training while nurse anesthetists bring valuable nursing experience.  Providing anesthesia is often compared to flying a passenger airplane, and the care team model is like having both a pilot and a co-pilot.  Has flying become so safe that we no longer need the pilot?  Seconds count in flight, and they count in the operating room when a patient’s life is on the line.  If approved, the proposed change in the VA nursing handbook will abolish this team model without giving veterans a choice and will require VA hospitals to assign veterans having surgery either a nurse anesthetist or a physician anesthesiologist but not offer both.  If they were given the choice, however, I think our veterans would choose “and” instead of “or.”  We all should.  In case a crisis happens during surgery, every pat...

Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 5, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Edward R. Mariano, MD Tags: Physician Surgery Source Type: blogs