The evolution and formalization of anesthesia assistant roles across Canada

The purpose of this Special Article is to document the evolution of the anesthesia assistant (AA) profession in Canada and summarize AA practice at Canadian institutions as it exists today, five decades after Quebec and 15 years after most other provinces formalized AA practice.

Through the Management Committee of the Association of Canadian University Departments of Anesthesia (ACUDA), we conducted a purposeful sampling of all ACUDA chairs or their delegates. We requested the following data: history of AAs becoming a reality in their particular province or region; potential recruitment pools; training programs and curricula; pathway to credentialing; funding, pay, retention, recruitment, and status of union representation; and metrics.

Data were provided by 19 institutions in 8 provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Given the different health care governance structures across the provinces, AA roles vary in terms of its associated technical, clinical, and educational responsibilities. The role of AAs in supporting anesthesia care through equipment maintenance and assistance with airway management, resuscitation, and administration of regional anesthesia seems to be well established, as is their role in providing brief intraoperative relief for anesthesiologists during a stable period of anesthesia. Anesthesia assistant duties continue to evolve, becoming more aligned with the specific institution and less dependent on the supervising anesthesiologist. Apart from the initial metrics collected during the Ontario ACT implementation pilot projects, we are not aware of any formal metrics, current or ongoing, being collected across Canada, related to either patient safety events or perioperative efficiency.

This compilation of pan-Canadian AA data shows diverse models of practice and highlights the value to patients and the health care system as a whole of incorporating these allied professionals into the anesthesia care team (ACT). The present findings allow us to offer suggestions for consideration during discussions of retention, recruitment, program expansion, and cross-country collection of metrics and other data. We conclude by making six recommendations: 1. recognize that implementation of ACTs is a key element in solving the challenge of an increasing surgical backlog; 2. develop, or facilitate the development of, metrics and increase data-sharing nationally to enable health care authorities to better understand the importance of AAs in patient safety and perioperative efficiency; 3. develop and implement funding strategies to lower the barriers to AA training such as hospital-sponsored positions, ongoing salary support, and return-of-service arrangements; 4. ensure that salaries appropriately reflect the increased level of training and added levels of responsibility of certified AAs; 5. develop long-term strategies to ensure stable funding, recruitment and retention, and a better match between the number of AA training positions and the need for newly certified AAs; and 6. engage all stakeholders to acknowledge that AAs, as knowledgeable and specifically trained assistants, not only fulfill their defined clinical role but also contribute significantly to patient safety and clinical efficiency by assuming nondirect patient care tasks.