Are you contemplating whether or not becoming a CRNA is the best for your future? If you want to determine if this is a good idea for your career path, Jenny Finnell is here, presenting everything you should know about getting into a CRNA school. Together with Maureen Osuna, known as Nurse Mo with Straight A Nursing, she breaks down the pros and cons of this practice, the required educational background and work experience, and the right way to differentiate yourself as a CRNA applicant. Jenny also explains why this line of work requires not just proper training but the right level of emotional intelligence and deep self-awareness as well.
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What You Need To Know About Becoming A CRNA
I’m sharing a guest episode with you that I did with Nurse Mo, who runs Straight A Nursing. It is an episode that’s going to share some of the key insights that you should know as you embark upon this CRNA journey. We go over some key aspects that whether you’re in nursing school or you’re now deciding this is the career path that you want to embark upon, what are some key things that you should know prior to ever deciding to CRNA as a career path for you? I hope you enjoy it. Let’s go ahead and get into our show.
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I’m here with Jenny Finnell from CRNA School Prep Academy. Did I get that right, Jenny?
You got it right.
Why don’t you take a quick minute and introduce yourself? I’ve got a ton of great questions for you that my readers will be interested in if they’re even thinking about being a CRNA. Tell us a quick bit about who you are and what you do.
I’ve been a CRNA for several years, which is hard to believe. I have always loved what I do. Several years ago, I started getting more active on social. People started reaching out to me and asking how I became a CRNA. I gave out my cell phone number and started mentoring. I quickly realized that there was not enough information. The pathways are also different. Because I always had a passion for precepting and mentoring students in that realm, it was natural for me to get into the mentoring space.
I started CRNA School Prep Academy several years ago. It’s been off to the races since then. We’ve now mentored over 5,000 ICU nurses, many of whom have gone on successfully to gain acceptance in the CRNA school. I have learned and grown so much. It’s a huge passion of mine. I enjoyed the thrill of getting people into school and sharing that acceptance news with me. It’s getting to relive that cloud nine feeling. I’m here and happy to share all about becoming a CRNA and about this career path.
Is CRNA The Right Career Path?
The first question that I have is whether you’re a student or a nurse who has been working for a little while, and how do you know if this is the right career path? How do you know that you’re suited for this path, that it’s something you would be good at?
I love leading with this question, Mo, because this is something that nursing students have a hard time understanding. What I remember about being a CRNA from the early days was in nursing school, people talked about career paths in nursing, and CRNA was one of those high-tier. If you ever get lucky enough to become A CRNA, you’ve made it. People see it as the cream of the crop.
What I’m here to tell you is we all start where you start, but you don’t want to head into this career path until you’ve done a thorough investigation of what it means to be a CRNA. You don’t want to invest that time and money into this career path because it takes a long time and it’s expensive unless you are sure this lights you up inside.
The best way to investigate what it means to be A CRNA and how to know if it’s the right fit for me and my personality type is to get into the operating room. This should start early on. You can be in high school. You can be a nursing student. It’s not too early to get these experiences to start understanding what it would be like if I were in these shoes. Would I be happy? Would I be comfortable being in the or? The OR can be a fast-paced, highly intense environment. As a CRNA, you make independent decisions. Part of the benefits of being a CRNA is that you have your “Google,” which is a lot of autonomy, but what does that mean to you, and how do you feel about having that responsibility? While it’s a big responsibility, it’s equally incredibly rewarding. You don’t want to take that lightly.
You’re mixing drugs. You’re determining how you’re treating the blood pressure and blood fluid management, talking with the surgeons and the circulators. There’s a lot of communication that goes on behind the scenes even though the patient’s asleep. Seeing that firsthand, I remember being in awe of what a CRNA did and being like, “I’ll never be able to achieve that. They seem to know everything. How do they know all that?”
I would encourage you to take a deep breath, slow down, and realize that they spent years training to get to that point. I would take multiple shadow experiences to see if this is something that lights me up. Do I get goosebumps? Do I get excited talking to a CRNA about this career? What are the pros? What are the cons of being a CRNA? Let them tell you. The pros are you don’t have to work the night shift if you don’t want to. You can have more time with family on holidays and weekends, but maybe a con is the fact that your breaks are unpredictable, and you have to have good bladder control. Getting some insights into what it means to live a day in the life of a CRNA is a great place to start.
What Does A CRNA Do?
I like that you talked about what A CRNA does because if you’ve never been in an OR, you might think that A CRNA gives the gases and the meds to put the patient to sleep, and that’s it. There’s so much more. Can you briefly talk about the different things that you do? The surgeon is doing the surgery, and you’re keeping the patient alive.
You have to be in tune with what the surgeon is doing and what the patient needs based on that surgery. I’ve done open heart, pediatrics, labor and delivery epidurals, spinal for C-sections, and every different type of surgery. You can imagine CRNAs do all kinds of cases. There’s nothing a CRNA cannot do in the realm of anesthesia.
With that regard, let’s say I’m doing a MAC, which stands for Monitored Anesthesia Care. Those can technically be a general without airways because you have to sometimes get the patient sedated to tolerate some of these painful procedures under a MAC anesthetic. That could be for an AV fistula. Those patients are sick. They’re getting dialysis. The potassium can be out of whack. You have to watch their fluids because you can’t overload them with fluids. They tend to be dry on lisinopril. Their vascular paths or heart IV sticks. Those can be challenging cases.
A lot of them have heart failure along with different comorbidities. You have things like the open heart where the patient’s coming in who has an unstable coronary disease or a valvular disease, and you’re doing an open heart case. Those types of cases require a lot of communication, not only between you and the surgeon but the perfusionist that’s involved.
You have to mix your own vasopressors. You have to know how to titrate them based on the effect on blood pressure management. You’re running things like ABGs, which are arterial blood gases, and things like a tag, which is looking at the coagulopathic nature of someone’s blood components and knowing whether they need platelets or FFP to stabilize them post-pump.
There’s a lot that people don’t realize that CRNAs do. It’s fun. If you’re excited and you’re getting nerded out, this is a career path that will light you up. It’s a lot of pharmacology and pathophysiology. They’re all different types of cases. You want to do pediatrics. You can work only at a pediatric hospital. You want to do OB. You can work at an OB-only facility. You want to do neuro. You can work at a hospital, specialize in neuro, and do a lot of neuro cases, such as craniotomies and laminectomy for back surgery. There are a lot of subspecialties you can get into in the anesthesia space.
When Should I Start Prepping for CRNA?
I’m nerding out, but there’s no way I’m going to CRNA school. It sounds intense. If you’d caught me when I was several years in to be an ICU nurse, I would’ve been all in for this because it is the stuff that I loved about critical care nursing. Thank you for making it sound exciting and bringing that to life. If you’re reading this and you got all excited when Jenny was talking about that, you might be starting to think, “I could do this.” When is the ideal time to start preparing for this pathway?
This question is going to look different for every individual. Let me preference this. I am going to give you generic overall advice. However, you have to do your own assessment of what you need. You can’t say everyone is going to fall into a certain category. I see the students who tend to find the most success in their CRNA journey are the students who start early. When I say early, the earlier, the better. That’s why I said, “If you’re in high school, shadow now. If you’ve decided nursing is your major, start now. If you are already going to graduate nursing school, start now.”
The key point is to start investigating now. If this is the career path for you, don’t wait. The more you wait on planning and preparing for CRNA school, the more roadblocks you may face and the longer it’s going to take. When people face roadblocks, they tend to get discouraged and give up on their dreams. I have people say, “CRNA seems unattainable. I went back and got my master’s in as an FNP.”
They come back after doing all that additional work, only to go back to CRNA school because they couldn’t let go of the desire to become a CRNA when they should have doubled down and focused on what it took to become a CRNA from the beginning and not went down that pathway of “maybe it’s not right for me; I’ll do FNP instead”. Save yourself the trouble and the pain, focus, and start investing if this is a career path you want. The timing is now. If this is interesting to you, after you are done with this lecture or this show, start doing some extra research.
Education to Become a CRNA
You talked about the education component. This is a big question, but could you give a high-level overview of what the educational background looks like for someone who’s going into a CRNA pursuit or heading down that path?
This has a lot of different components to it, but I’ll give you the basics and it’s standard. Having a four-year BSN degree is one pathway. Another pathway would be to get your ADN and go on to get your BSN. That is the most common pathway that I see, mostly due to the fact that it’s the most affordable pathway to becoming a nurse. You can get your ADN. You can work in the ICU and get your ICU experience after you get your ADN. While you get your BSN, you can get your ICU experience under your belt. That’s the most common pathway because it makes the most financial sense.
The last pathway is to get a bachelor’s in science of any kind and get your BSN on top of it. BSN or ADN plus BSN or Bachelor’s in Science and BSN on top of that. Those are the most common pathways. People reading, you already have a master’s degree. There’s a lot of confusion. When we became a doctorate degree, people thought you already have a master’s to go into CRNA school, but that’s not the case. You go directly from having a bachelor’s to a doctorate degree, becoming a CRNA. That gives you a brief overview.
It officially started. 2022 was the first year that every single school in the United States had to become an official DNP. That way, by the time they graduate, they will all be DNP-prepared.
How Long Is CRNA School?
They did extend it by about 7 to 9 months, depending on the school, but the majority is about nine months extra. That nine months is your DNP project. The anesthesia curriculum, clinical, and training did not change. The only thing that got tacked onto your schooling is this DNP project, which is the doctoral thesis project that you spend nine months preparing. That’s the biggest difference between what used to be.
CRNA Curriculum and Required Competitive GPA
Is it 2 or 3 years?
It’s 36 months.
Can people work while they’re going to CRNA school?
That varies from program to program. Most programs are DNP-prepared, and they tacked on that additional nine months. A lot of schools allow nurses to work during that DNP portion of their schooling. It depends on whether your program is front-loaded or integrated. What that means is if it’s front-loaded, you start off with all your DNP projects. Because of all you do, you can tend to work more easily than if you also have an anesthesia curriculum built into it. If you start with your DNP and a mixture of CRNA curriculum and start clinical relatively soon, which is called an integrated program, it’s going to be harder to work because you’re going to be juggling a lot more on your plate at once.
It depends on the structure of your program and knowing the structure of it and the rules. Some schools have a hard rule that you cannot work. Other schools say, “Do what you can, but if you don’t maintain your grades at X point, you’re out.” That’s the hard truth. It’s knowing what you can handle. The majority of people don’t work more than a shift a week or two in the beginning and completely cut it completely out the last several months of the program.
You’re all in if you’re doing this.
Between clinical and class, you’re looking at a 50 to 60-hour week commitment to clinical tasks. There’s no time left to work unless you can stay up and don’t need sleep.
That is a great reminder and plays a role in people’s decisions, especially if they can even go down this path because that is a huge factor. What about the GPA for CRNA school? I’ve seen you talk about this a lot of times, “Getting a 4.0 does not mean you’re going to get into a CRNA program. Getting a 3.5 does not mean you’re going to get rejected.” What are the requirements for a competitive GPA?
4.0 gets rejected all the time. The higher your GPA, the better the odds you’re going to get an interview, but you can still bomb that interview. The 4.0 students can face a lot of rejection because their interview skills are lacking, which we will get into later. As far as the overall GPA picture, what I want to stress and hone in on the most is the fact that you can’t look at your overall GPA. You can’t say, “I have a 3.0 in my ADN and a 4.0 in my BSN. I’m good. I have a 3.5.” It doesn’t work that way.
Depending on how many credits you took in your ADN and BSN, they will all factor in your overall GPA. Plus, schools always break down your science GPA and your overall GPA. Some of them also look at the last 60 credits of your GPA. They want to see trends going up, not trends going down. If you start off not exactly rocking your college career, which many people do because we’re 18, we’re children, and we’re learning how to do keg stands, sometimes you make some mistakes.
They get that. They know you’re human, but what they want to see is you trend up into the right, not rocky all over throughout your college career or later in your college career. Did you tank your grades? That signifies how well you are at handling your stress management. What are your priorities? The longer you have with that not happening in your college transcript history, the better. That’s why they break down the last 60 credits.
Committing mistakes is part of being a human. However, you don’t want it to become a trend that rocks your college career and beyond. Click To TweetScience GPAs are things like hard sciences. These are things like anatomy, pathophysiology, chemistry, microbiology, algebra, statistics, and physics. Anything that’s a hard science that doesn’t have a NURS for nursing that happened outside the college of nursing is the hard sciences. Math, biochem, and anatomy are core sciences. They add up that GPA alone. That is important because that’s a good indication of how successful they feel like you’re going to be academically with the rigorous science-based curriculum that you’re going to endure during anesthesia school.
If you have a science GPA that’s less than 3.3, that’s going to set up some red flags. Why? It’s because most CRNA schools require 84% to sometimes 87% to pass a class. B minus is failing in CRNA school. They want to see, at minimum, an A, B, or better, ideally an A or B average like a 3.5 science GPA. With how competitive things are going, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that keeps going up. The average used to be a 3.5 science GPA. It’s getting closer to 3.6, even 3.7. Some schools are getting higher averages because they have so many applications pouring in their doors.
I’m not saying this to discourage you. I’m telling you to know this. Don’t stand still. Don’t assume you’re going to be okay and do nothing because that’s a good way to have the door shut in your face. Take an advanced pathophysiology class, graduate-level pathophysiology, get an A, and say, “I might have a 3.3 in my science GPA from several years ago. I took a graduate-level science, and I got an A.” That’s a good indication you were ready. That’s what I want to drive home. Overall GPA, you’re looking at an average of 3.5. For a science GPA, you’re looking at a 3.5, but to be competitive, you’re looking closer to a 3.7. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get a lower GPA and get accepted, but that’s where we’re at.
That’s another reason to start now. If you’re thinking about pursuing this in the future, starting now, buckling down on those hard science classes, which I know a lot of students like heading into nursing school. They want to be nurses so much. They sometimes view these science classes and prerequisites as like, “I have to take this class before I can apply.” They almost look at it as a roadblock, but it’s not. It is how you prepare and get that background core science knowledge. It’s also how you show that you can handle the academic rigor of nursing school and, further on if you decide to go on to something like CRNA school. Start now doubling down on those hardcore science classes.
Don’t close your doors for later. You never know. I hear many people say this to me, which is upsetting to hear over and over like a broken record, but they said, “If I only knew that I thought nursing was it for me, I thought I’d be done. I thought I’d get that degree, and that’s all I ever wanted to do.” After several years on the road, they have a change of heart, and they’re stuck with this track record of being a C or D student. It’s hard to climb out of that hole. Don’t do that to yourself if. If this is catching you before mistakes are made, it’s easier to act now than to play catch up.
ICU Experience for CRNA
I’ve graduated from nursing school, and I’m thinking about becoming a CRNA. I don’t think I can apply. I need some specific type of work experience. Can you talk about that?
This is another topic where people can get confused and misguided. What I want to stress and go home with a big tip for you is to reach out to your CRNA schools early and often because I know that all schools are the same, but they’re also different. You have to understand what your school requires. Some schools will say the NICU is okay, but some schools don’t. You can’t reach out to one CRNA school and assume that applies to all CRNA schools.
That’s not what you want to read. It makes it confusing and sticky, but that’s where we’re at. That’s why I’m here to shed some light on what ICU units count. Some of you want to know right off the bat and eliminate it; PACU, operating room, and Cath lab are not ICU.
For some odd reason, these are three units of people who get thrown into the mixture of ICU. Maybe because in post-surgery, you’re taking care of intubated patients on occasion, but those intubated patients go straight to the ICU if they don’t have a bed on occasion or you have to intubate in the PACU. That does happen, but it’s not an ICU. You’re not doing long-term management of a sick patient in the PACU.
It’s the same thing with the operating room. You are not doing the management. The CRNA is the one doing all the management in the operating room. Your CRNA is delegating, and you’re getting to see a close course with the CRNA to understand what the profession’s all about. You, as an operating room nurse, are not managing that patient in a critical condition. Its operating room and it doesn’t count.
Cath lab patient patients can be sick. They have acute MI. They’re coming in, and they’re unstable, and I get it. They’re on drips, but that’s still not long-term management. It’s short-lived. You’re going to have a CRNA in the room managing it with you for some of those cases. For some of them, you don’t. They’re more stable ones. You’re not the primary nurse taking care of that patient, especially if the CRNA in the room is doing some of it and you’re not managing it long-term. Meaning they come in after a few hours. That’s not long-term. It’s the same with ER. We’re going to get to the ER because ER is a unique breed. I’ll come back to the ER.
We’re looking at ICU units such as the CVICU, CCU, SICU, and any version of a cardiovascular ICU. Same with surgical neurotrauma. Sometimes, it’s all combined, specialized, and separate. Any type of surgical trauma medical ICU work is safe and all adults. Notice I’ve talked about mostly adult ICUs because when you start getting into the kid realm, and I’m a ped CRNA- I love kids, and I’m not trying to tell you this to discourage you from becoming a NICU or PICU nurse because I love taking care of kids and we need more pediatric CRNAs.
The safest bet is to stick to an adult ICU because some schools can see especially the NICU as too specialized and not a well-rounded picture of what you’ll be managing on a day-in and day-out basis as a CRNA. You do lack the knowledge base of the pathophysiology process, disease process, and pharmacology process of a sick ICU patient in the adult world.
Few schools accept the NICU, which is the neonatal ICU. You have the PICU, which is the pediatric ICU. That is more acceptable, meaning more schools will accept that. Kudos to you guys if you’re already on that track because all CRNA schools look at data, and PICU nurses tend to score the highest on their boards. They do well overall. We have an idea of why that is. It’s because you’re well-rounded. PICU can be a toddler and a sixteen-year-old. A sixteen-year-old can be an adult size, and you have a toddler who’s two. You have to understand a wide range of fluid management and doses per kilo. You’re skilled at doses per kilo. You tend to have a nice realm of management skills.
The only thing you don’t see, which is unique to the adult world, are things like chronic comorbidities like renal. You can’t have a kid going to renal failure if they overdosed on Tylenol or NSAIDs. It can happen, but you may miss out on some of the comorbidities that an older adult will have. You can still get a well-rounded experience as a PICU nurse, as long it’s a high acuity unit. Overall, the safest bet is an adult ICU.
In the ER, it is the same thing with the whole PACU or cath labs experience. The reason why they don’t work is because it’s not long-term management. Some schools will take it, but not very many, like a small handful. On one hand, I can count how many say, “Yes, I take ER.” No questions asked. The majority of schools that say ER on their website will say it on an individual basis.
What does that mean? It means it’s not preferred. If you ever see an individual basis, it means it’s not preferred. Why would you do that? The same thing applies to the CRNA school, which says, “I recommend this.” Don’t read into recommendation as maybe I don’t have to do it. You should read a recommendation as I need to do it. Train your brain to see that recommendation, as I need to do that.
Train your brain to see CRNA school recommendations as a drive to do that, and maybe more. Click To TweetICU Acuity
You mentioned about acuity. I’m assuming you mean that not all ICUs are created equal. Can you talk about the acuity?
People assume you have to come from a level one ICU, and you do not. However, the reason why that is such a well-known fact is because, without question, if a program looks at a resume, they see level one trauma ICU, and it ranked as a level one, they know the acuity is there. They don’t have to question it. In level two, it’s the same thing. Level two has as much acuity as level one. The only difference between a level one and level two hospital is a level two hospital is not academic. They don’t do as much research. They don’t get the status of a level one because they don’t have the research behind it. The acuity is high in both level one and level two.
When you get to the ones that are not ranked or the rural community hospitals, it’s okay to do that, but you have to highlight your experience and show them that you took care of ventilators, advanced life support, ECMO, or CRRT. The reality is most rural hospitals will ship those patients out if they get that sick. If a patient’s talking to you and swallowing pills, they’re not sick enough. If your patient gets sick and they transfer them out, get in your car, follow the ambulance, and apply for a job at whatever hospital they took that patient to. That’s what I recommend.
If you think about it, most CRNA schools are in city hubs, and they have plenty of applications pouring in from all these high-level acuity hospitals. I have some people say, “I live far away from that hospital.” If you’re willing to drive to CRNA school, which is an hour away, you should also be willing to work in the ICU, which is an hour away, to get that experience. That’s going to set you up for success. That’s what a program will tell you.
Standing Out
When I worked in the ICU, we were the receiving hospital for the smaller towns outside. We weren’t at level one because we were not an academic hospital. UCSF is a level one type facility. I would say it was a level two medical ICU. It’s good to know that would’ve counted had I decided to do this if I had met you many years ago, Jenny. Let’s talk about standing out as an applicant. You mentioned it in an earlier interview. Can we talk about standing out as an applicant? You mentioned that sometimes, the interview is what causes people to not get accepted.
The way I visualize it in my own brain is by picturing applicants all as bunches of apples. If you’re all a bunch of apples, you look the same. You’re all red apples. What makes you the shiniest apple? That’s what you’re going for. You’re all going to have ICU experience, great resumes, and good recommendations. I’ve had plenty of faculty tell me it is incredibly hard because, on paper, everyone looks the same.
How do you differentiate yourself, especially before you even get an interview? The grades are a huge one as far as I don’t stand still. I’m taking an extra course, and I’m showing initiative. You don’t have to be a 4.0 student to take an extra course. If you think your science GPA is on the lower end, take an extra course. I’m not here to encourage you to take a course just to take a course. Please don’t do that. That could be a huge waste of time and money. Before you take anything, please understand whether you need to by reaching out to your programs, go to open houses, and getting involved. That’s step one, number one.
Get to know your schools. Go to their open houses. Most schools have them. If they don’t, go to some other schools’ open house. It’s okay. Faculty know each other. They all talk. Even if you’re like, “Am I supposed to have gone to an open house?” It is not many of them, but I know, on occasion, there are a few schools that don’t have open houses, which I find odd. Go to an open house that you can go to, even if it’s a virtual one, and ask pertinent questions. This is a time when they’re going to tell you the layout of their program. I encourage you to go to several of those.
The reason why I think that it’s important to stand out is because you’re going to have more information, and knowledge is power to allow you to stand out. You have to inform yourself first and foremost. Number two is that we shouldn’t treat every application the same. I see students all the time say, “I’ll write one essay letter and throw it at all these schools.” No.
They all might have different prompts. That would be not following the directions, which is automatic elimination. I don’t care how good you look on paper. If you don’t follow the directions or the rules and you have an essay that asks for 500 words, and you give them 1,000, you’re out. Game over. They don’t want people who can’t follow directions.
Little things like that go a long way. Leadership roles are big. Doing things outside of the two-day-to-be-expected stuff. A lot of mistakes people make in leadership roles- They join clubs and committees, but they don’t do anything. That’s not going to help you. If they ask you about that experience, you’re like, “I’m on this unit committee, and it’s cool.” That’s not insightful as far as what are you doing on that unit committee. What are you passionate about?
Pick things that light you up. People think they pick things. They’re like, “I’m going to work for the Red Cross and volunteer for them because it’s medical.” That’s not what they’re passionate about. They can’t speak to that passionately. I met a student who loved the garden. She’d garden and gave all the food to a local food bank. She was passionate about it. She lit up every time she would talk about it. I’m like, “That’s great. Own that. That’s a passion of yours. They’re going to see that. That’s going to make you unique.” You want to stand out you. If you’re not passionate about what you can speak to, you’re not going to stand out.
When you’re looking at leadership roles, pick things that light you up and that you’re passionate about and have a why behind why you choose to do something. Get involved, and be active. Those are my big key takeaways. The second one that you led into was the interview process. If I had a nickel for every time someone said, “I didn’t think I’d get an interview.” They didn’t start preparing. Why would you do that to yourself? You were putting yourself walking into a shark tank without any gear. That’s the best way I could describe it.
You need to prepare from the time you decide that CRNA is a career path you want to do. When you’re in nursing school, that’s when you start preparing for the interview. That sounds crazy, but not like, “I’m going to study for the interview.” The reason why I need to paint this overall long picture is because, first of all, when you learn, it takes time. You don’t learn anything by cramming. That’s a memory function. A memory only gets you so far. If you want to understand concepts, connect the dots, and create little pathways in your brain that allow good recall, you have to understand. You have to know how concepts connect. That’s building your road map to success.
Learning takes time. You don’t learn anything by cramming. You have to understand different concepts and connect them. This is the first step in building your road map to success. Click To TweetThat starts from day one. That means when you’re in the ICU or the operating, and you’re shadowing, you’re asking maybe while they’re doing it, but maybe if you have a lunch break with the CRNA, you say, “Why did you pick fentanyl over Dilaudid? Why did you choose Atamet over propofol? Why did you choose a rapid intubation over a regular induction?” Let them educate you on why they chose certain things to do. Build your knowledge base and understanding of why these things were chosen. Be a toddler. Ask why.
When you’re in the ICU, it’s the same thing. Why is this insulin protocol this way? Why does this make sense? What’s going on with this ketoacidosis? Why do they require this? How does it move the potassium in and out of the cell? What does it do to the calcium? Ask yourself, how do these things play out in real life? What hemodynamics do you see on the monitor? Understanding the why and how it contributes to the disease process you’re managing, whether you have a GI bleed.
I remember googling octreotide, figuring out the mechanism of action of octreotide, and creating my little study binder. When you have drips you’ve never seen before, look it up. That’s the best way to prepare for your interview because it does not happen the month or the week before. You’re like, “What am I going to do? I’m going to try to find every CRNA question posted on Google, study those, and I’ll be okay.” Set yourself up for long-term success.
I like this method of preparing from day one because it’s going to help you be a stronger student in CRNA school and have a higher likelihood of success to graduate. All this knowledge you’re learning in the ICU are all pieces of tidbits of knowledge you’re going to use in your curriculum in CRNA school. If you have a strong background in pathophysiology and pharmacology coming into your CRNA program because you studied all along the way, you’re going to be so much further down the road and struggle a lot less.
You’ll hear people say, “CRNA school is like drinking from a fire hose.” It is. I hate to say it but that’s the one thing I can say is true. The knowledge itself is not difficult because it’s a lot of similar concepts, but you take that one concept, and you go way deep. It comes at you faster than you can even grasp that you’re having to learn it. It’s learning by rapid-fire. It’s hard to keep up if you get behind.
Ideal CRNA Applicant
If you had to give the key to getting accepted into a CRNA program, what would that be?
If I had to pick one thing, it would be to be well-rounded because I’ve heard from a lot of program faculty that they are looking for the right person for the cohort. They don’t look for the book-smart student. They don’t look for someone who can answer all their questions well or write a good essay. Those things are all important. They want someone who has it all, which I know you’re probably like, “That feels defeating.”
Let me back it up with the fact that if you take some of the tips we gave you in this episode, you’re going to have it all. I also think of this in my brain when I visualize what it looks like to be a well-rounded applicant is a bunch of polka dots. You can picture your resume and your application like a bunch of polka dots because you’re going to have all these requirements. You don’t want a giant red dot right in the center and barely any other dots around it. You want a smaller red dot with a bunch of other relatively similar-sized dots around it.
I have people go all in on certifications, meaning alphabet soup. I have every CMC, CSC, and CTC, but yet their GPA is lackluster. That’s not going to do you any good. Put more effort into boosting your GPA and taking courses you didn’t do well in. People are like, “I’ll retake an old microbiology course because I got an A the first time. I’ll get an A again, and it’ll look good.” No. If you have a C in chemistry, they want to see how you improved in chemistry. That’s your sore point. Retake that course.
Look for your weaknesses. Look for the dots that I call “small and weak”. Build them up to make your overall picture of you an equally scattered-out polka dot picture. You’re well-rounded and blended. Lastly, with that comes emotional intelligence. Schools are focusing heavily on this. I could go on a whole episode on that alone, but I will summarize what emotional intelligence is. It’s self-awareness and how you understand how others perceive you.
Things like body language, eye contact, how you speak and how you communicate, how you listen, and how you take direction. Do you get angry? Do you get frazzled easily? As you age, you tend to, at least if you’re aware of it, become aware of yourself. You can grow your EQ and your emotional intelligence. It starts with awareness. You can’t grow your EQ if you’re completely oblivious to how others see you and how you are interpreted.
The best way to start with EQ is to ask someone who knows you well and say, “What can I improve upon? Where do you see my weaknesses as a person? Do I avoid conflict? That’s one of my weaknesses. Are you a people pleaser? Why is that? Don’t say, “I’m a people pleaser. That’s all I can do.” What are you doing about that? Taking the initiative to say, “How can I improve? Why do I not like conflict? How can I put myself in conflict on purpose to figure out how to handle it better and why it bothers me? I can figure out a process that works for me, and that feels good. If I’m in the OR and the surgeon chews me out because I didn’t do something, even though it was not even my fault, I can handle that situation with calmness and grace.”
The surgeon was like, “I’m going to invite you back to my room next time.” You’re like, “Please, no.” Those situations where you’ve won are if you deal with a situation that most people can’t handle, and you’ve allowed yourself to handle it, and they put you in those positions more often. Think about it as in the ICU taking the more critically sick patients. That’s high stress. If you volunteer yourself to do those things, even though it’s hard and it feels scary, you will stretch yourself. Stretching yourself is key to that.
8 Steps to CRNA Road Map Guide by CRNA School Prep Academy®
I want to talk about this guide that you’ve made. We’re going to put a link in the episode notes to this awesome guide that Jenny has made available for free to everyone. Can you talk briefly about what that is? Look in the episode notes to get that link. What’s this guide all about, Jenny?
I revamped it. It’s brand new and fresh for you guys. It’s now 29 pages. It went from 21 to 29.
I read it, and I thought it was stellar.
I’ve been working on it from the beginning back when I first started mentoring several years ago. My whole point with making it is to help you not have these knowledge barriers that are going to hinder your progress toward becoming a CRNA. I want you to be successful, whatever it takes. Knowledge is power. The more you know now, the more you can take action and allow yourself an easier path down the road.
That’s what I want for you. I don’t want you to struggle. I don’t want you to feel like you’re not capable. I want to empower you to feel like you can do this. My hope is to empower you to feel like you can tackle this dream and that this is what you want. I want you to have all the knowledge you possibly can need to take those active steps towards success.
Tell people about CRNA School Prep Academy for anyone reading who is actively starting down this path. Jenny is awesome. She can mentor you through this. Tell us about your Academy.
People call it CSPA because it is a mouthful. There are different membership levels. We have what we call a foundations member, which is for those who are starting the planning process and are looking for some quick tools to allow them to plan for this career path to know what the next actions are. If you’re early on in nursing school or even exploring this career path and not even sure yet if it’s for you, that’s a foundation’s membership that I would recommend. The premium membership is when someone is like, “This is what I want to do. I want to commit.”
(Episode Edit- As of airing, the Foundations Membership has been retired. We now offer the exclusive Nursing Student to CRNA Accelerator Course– the best of our Foundations information bundled into an on-demand course. Learn more here: https://www.cspaedu.com/tjylnnik)
Even if you’re in nursing school, if you’re committing to becoming a CRNA and 110% that CRNA is what you want to do, there are no questions about it. The premium membership is built not only to help you prepare for all the phases of your CRNA journey but also to help you build that critical care knowledge base. We have a growing critical care library. We do a lot of education.
It’s not just education. We take it directly from a CRNA curriculum. We have CRNA faculty who provide a lot of education. We teach you deep-level pathophysiology and pharmacology. The second time you see it, it is going to be in CRNA school. It’s going to be in-depth. It’s going to help build those pathways like I spoke to when you’re in the ICU and connecting the dots. It’s going to allow you to interview more smoothly and transition to your role as a nurse resident more smoothly. We give you the foundations in building blocks.
In premium membership, we do one live event a month. That could be a financial webinar by a certified financial planner on how to pay for a standard high school. That could be a group mock interview session, a live resume edit, or a lecture on top-drawer meds where we break down pharmacology topics. We can mix up the live events every month.
We also host virtual events with our national association, which is the AANA. I highly encourage you to know what the AANA is if CRNA is the career path for you. We do things like that. We have our guarantee program. Our guarantee program has been around for a while. We’ve had a lot of success with it. We let our first cohort back in January of 2023, and we graduated the first cohort. We had a 100% success rate.
We have an outline curriculum. It’s a twelve-month curriculum that outlines what you need to do week by week. It’s detailed. We outline the steps to success. We’ve studied success now for several years. We know what it takes to be successful. We also have faculty coaches. We have CRNA faculty who have experience as program directors and assistant program directors. They coach a couple of times a week. You can go to these sessions, and they will coach you on specific topics.
That itself is incredibly valuable and a way for you to get past these roadblocks if you have them. That is our guarantee program. What that means is if you don’t achieve success, and you apply to a CRNA school between 6 and 18 months, and you get rejected, we get your money back for the investment in the program. That’s what it means. It’s a money-back guarantee that we trust our process so much that we want to extend that money-back guarantee to our students.
I don’t think you had that when we talked last time.
It’s new. It was one of those things where I’m like, “I want to do this because I know it’s what people want. People are like, “Jenny, what do I want the most is I want to get into CRNA school. Get me into CRNA school.” People don’t like risk. If you invest all this time and money to pursue a career path and you’re not successful, what did I do with two years in my life or a year of my life?
This was a way for us to say, “Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s trust the process, go out, and see if this can work.” It did. It worked. I’m thrilled, and these students are thrilled. It goes to show the power of mentorship. If you have someone who helps you along, it allows you to get where you want to go faster and easier. That’s what we are. We’re a mentorship program that believes in you and your ability to achieve success.
Closing Words
I want to thank you for coming to the show and sharing your wonderful knowledge. You were inspiring. There are some people out there that are now thinking, “I can do this.” I want to thank you for that.
Thank you so much, Mo. It’s been a pleasure, as always.
Important Links
FREE! 8 Steps to Becoming a CRNA: https://www.cspaedu.com/ruxzegbt
Transform Uncertainty into Confidence and Gain CRNA School Acceptance Sooner with the Nursing Student to CRNA Accelerator Course! Learn More: https://www.cspaedu.com/tjylnnik
Thousands of nurses have gained CRNA school acceptance with CRNA School Prep Academy. Join today for access to all of the tools proven to accelerate your CRNA success! Click here:
Get CRNA School insights sent straight to your inbox! Join the CSPA email list: https://www.cspaedu.com/podcast-email
Join the Free Facebook Community here! https://www.facebook.com/groups/crnaschoolprepacademyfree
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