Residents

Exclusive Opportunities and Support from Day One of Your Program

As an AANA resident member, you’re backed by the wisdom and expertise of more than 61,000 fellow residents and CRNAs/nurse anesthesiologists.

Plus, great benefits help you learn, lead, and succeed—grants and scholarships, resident programs, leadership opportunities, exclusive savings on insurance and resident loans, and much more.

Notice of Terminology Change from “Student” to “Resident”

At the August 2023 AANA Business Meeting, an amendment was presented and approved to update the AANA bylaws terminology from “Student” to “Resident” to identify individuals enrolled in nurse anesthesiology education programs.

Enrollees in a nurse anesthesiology program hold–at minimum–a Bachelor of Science level degree in Nursing in addition to multiple years of critical care experience (averaging more than 6,000 hours per the AANA). The term “nurse anesthesiology resident” is more appropriate to the education and experience of those enrolled in a nurse anesthesiology program and the training complexity of those programs. In fact, the residency term has and is being commonly utilized by undergraduate and graduate Nursing, nurse practitioner, physician associate, and other healthcare-related professional programs. Specifically, the following facilities advertise their nursing programs as “residencies”: Mayo Clinic, AdventHealth, Nemours, Duke Health, Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins, Brigham and Women’s, VCU Health, and most notably, the Department of Veterans Affairs.

We understand that there may be facilities that prohibit this terminology, but this change to the AANA bylaws does not in any way force any nurse anesthesiology trainee, preceptor, or program to use the term “resident’ or “residency” in or outside the clinical setting. What it does do, though, is it makes the nomenclature of “nurse anesthesiology resident” accepted for AANA to use amongst its communications to its members and stakeholders, while also allowing program faculty an official professional source to refer to when advocating for the nomenclature at the local level.