Job Satisfaction Among Nurse Anesthetists

This research reviews the issue of job satisfaction among nurse anesthetists. As anesthesia specialists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs), provide anesthesia for patients undergoing surgical, obstetrical, and diagnostic procedures. CRNAs administer medications to keep patients asleep or pain free during surgery and constantly monitor every important function of the patient's body (Bryan Memorial Hospital/University of Kansas School of Nurse Anesthesia, 1998).

Nurse anesthetists confront most of the same problems that are confronted by all professional nurses in relation to the issue of job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction. These problems include high levels of stress, heavy workloads, and job burn-out, among others. As is true of all advanced practice nurses, however, CRNAs are confronted with the problem of challenges to their right to practice. The challenge to the right to practice is an important factor in the development of job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction among nurse anesthetists.

A recognized authority on job satisfaction, Edwin Locke (1983), defined job satisfaction as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences" (p. 1300). Job satisfaction, however, is a complex factor, and the level of job satisfaction among a group of individuals is the product of the interaction of a variety of other factors (Maidan

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burn-out is held to result from the combined effects of work-related factors that create unrelieved work stress, which in turn, leads to a generally debilitated psychological condition in individuals. Where nurses believe that the stressors in their environment are task-related, and that the consequences of exposure to these stressors are inevitable, there exists the potential for a self-fulfillment of expectations. Job Satisfaction/Job Dissatisfaction and Challenges to Practice In the 1990s, professional nursing contends with long-standing challenges to the profession's prerogatives from physicians, and with relatively recent challenges involving hospital administrators, and para-professional personnel (Neighbors & Eldred, 1993). Nurse anesthetists confront this issue at the federal level in 1998, as physician anesthesiologists attempt to legislate nurse anesthetists out of practice. The issue of who should control nursing is rooted in an age old conflict between nurses and physicians, and it is rooted in the contemporary restructuring of the health care delivery environment. Physicians have traditionally assumed a superiority of status with respect to all other care givers, in the delivery of health care services to patie
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2940
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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