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The Anesthesia Brief · Issue #1
The whole landscape,
in five minutes.
By Marc Smith, DNP, CRNA & Shantall Ruiz Cummins, DNP, CRNA · June 2026
If you're thinking it, we're talking about it.
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Welcome to The Anesthesia Brief. We're Marc and Shantall, two CRNAs who got tired of hunting down what's actually happening in our field across a dozen tabs, none of them written for us. So we built the one we wanted.
Every Tuesday we read the bills, the board actions, the pay data, the shortages, all the fine print nobody else bothers to translate, and we hand you what matters in about five minutes. No fluff, no spin, no pretending everything's fine.
Let's get into it.
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This Week's Top Story
They built the burnout, then called us the crisis
In Becker's, Vijay Sudheendra, MD, president of Narragansett Bay Anesthesia, called part of the anesthesia shortage "manufactured" by 1099 and per-diem CRNAs who want to work 24 to 32 hours and still be paid like they work 40. CRNA leaders see it differently. Melissa Croad, CRNA, APRN, president of the Massachusetts Association of Nurse Anesthesiology, argues the manufactured part is the staffing model itself, paying physicians to "supervise" CRNAs who, in her state, are already independent and don't need it. One blames the people. The other blames the system.
Our take is at the bottom of this issue ↓
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⏱ Act This Week
Heads up if you do any telehealth, the DEA's pandemic-era rules that let you prescribe controlled substances over telemedicine run out December 31. The permanent fix still isn't signed. Plan like the deadline is real, because right now it is.
→ Full Act / Watch / Background
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This Month's Number
$276,000
That's the market median for a CRNA right now. If you don't know your number cold, you're negotiating from behind. Know it before you sit across from anyone.
→ Full Rate Sheet
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Board Watch
We read the board disciplinary records so you don't have to, and we're not printing names. What's useful is the why. Diversion, back-filled documentation, and missed self-reporting are what take licenses. Protect yourself accordingly.
→ Patterns & protection
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Scope, Moving
Ohio's new CRNA law went live June 8. Both the nurse and physician associations are calling it a win, which tells you to read the actual statute, not the press release.
→ Full scope tracker + your state
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Drug Shortage Flash
Propofol, fentanyl, rocuronium and vecuronium are all running short right now. Check your sources before you count on them.
→ Full shortage list
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Coming to Your OR
The FDA just classified a device that measures pain objectively while you're under general anesthesia. Not in your room yet, but it's the direction monitoring is heading.
→ Tech watch
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Our Take
Here's what nobody at the top will say out loud. The shortage is real, and the people getting blamed for it are the ones who already walked away from a system that stopped working for them.
Hospitals spent years running anesthesia lean, stacking the rooms, skipping the breaks, treating us like a line item, then acting shocked when people walked. Now they call a CRNA who picks up her own schedule "someone taking advantage," when all she's doing is refusing a deal that stopped being fair.
The burnout wasn't a glitch. It was the model. Leaving isn't the betrayal. Staying quiet about why would be. That's why we started this.
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The Anesthesia Brief is free. Built by two CRNAs who wanted one place to find everything.
Read the full brief →
Legislative data, LegiScan & OpenStates (CC BY 4.0). Drug shortage data, ASHP / openFDA. Federal regulatory data, FederalRegister.gov (public domain). Compensation, Marit Health (market feed), BLS, AANA.
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