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2004-03-03 - 9:55 a.m. This entry is going to be a diatribe, so sit back and get comfy while I get my soapbox out. After I finish nursing school, I plan to work for a year and then go to grad school and become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. Two of the local hospitals have made rumbles about opening outpatient surgery centers within 15 miles of my home. So I would love to work at one of those. The work shouldn't be so hard, and the money would be good. (CRNA's start at about 100K/year) and there would be no on-call, nights, etc. Plus the surgeries would be fairly simply, but varied to keep my interest. I want to work for about 10 years, and then quit, for several reasons (which I'll put in another post) so why shouldn't I make as much money as possible in those 10 years? The point of this article is that most people in the medical profession think this is the lazy way out. For example, I took my son to the urologist this summer and when she found out my plans, she chided me for wanting to do the easy work. Well, putting people to sleep is not easy or simple, but I am tired of people thinking that because I don't want to sacrifice my entire life to the medical/nursing profession that I am lazy. I have a family. I want to spend time with my family. Nursing School takes a lot of my time, and Anesthesist school will be worse. If I wanted to be a loner whose entire life was her job, I wouldn't have gotten married and had a child. But unfortunately the health care profession demands total allegiance. Yes I understand why, in theory. We are dealing with people's lives after all. But I think that being the one of only two CRNA's at a small town hospital and having to work every other night on call is ridiculous. (This is what my grandmother, a retired CRNA did for the last several years of her career and it nearly killed her) I am trying instead to put my family first and find a way to work smarter, not harder! I think the health care industry's work ethic is skewed and don't appreciate being condemned for wanting to be a family gal.
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