Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRedChief
I ran vents in the OR during my residency at Truman, Research, St. Luke’s, Children’s Mercy and Menorah. But that was a long time ago. So that will free up some doctors to run vents but doesnt increase the total RT’s I posted earlier.
Curious, are RT’s still intubating patients or is that all Doctors these days?
|
Depends where you are but doctors are not the ones doing the majority of intubation or managing airways and monitoring patients in surgery. I don’t know about the ICU though. In the ORs in KS CRNAs intubate and are the sole anesthesia provider in states that allow it such as KS and places that go that route. But even within that, in Kansas for example, it seems to depend on the hospital system if they have anesthesiologist or not. But either way CRNAs intubate with some places having anesthesiologists present if they prefer it, but they don’t stay during the whole case. CRNAs run the breathing and drug administration and keep the patients out and whatever else needed. There is no requirement for the doctor to be present in the room or at the location at all though so it really depends on each hospital system and even individual doctor within that.
In Missouri they have CRNAs as well as AAs who act similarly to CRNAs but they are not trained ICU nurses like CRNAs. They also cannot work independently. I also don’t believe they can intubate without anesthesiologist present but not 100% on that. But these are the people managing airways and running ventilators in the OR. I can’t speak to when RTs where removed from the ORs. But with AAs, even though they can run one since they are not trained ICU nurses I don’t know if they could assist patients in the ICU like a CRNA can.
There are somewhere around 35,000 CRNAs in the US, all of which are qualified to run ventilators in the ICU but it depends if they are hospital employees or physician groups if they can do so without some sort of temporary allowance. But it seems it’s more likely there’s a shortage of ventilators than people to run them as long hospitals keep them employed without many surgeries going and if they can figure how to allow group employed ones to temporarily be in the ICU since those aren’t all hospital employees.