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Four years ago, as I began my term as AANA Region 2 director, our profession faced many challenges. Our members, elected leaders, and staff had recently endured a long and difficult battle to secure the opportunity for individual states to opt out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requirement for physician supervision of nurse anesthetists. Just a month earlier, President Rodney Lester, CRNA, PhD, had marshaled AANA resources to manage the fallout from the news that a nurse anesthetist in Oklahoma had been accused of reusing needles and syringes and was believed to have inoculated dozens of patients with hepatitis C virus. Then, at 8:54 p.m. on Oct.31,1 received a brief threesentence email from Rita Rupp, RN, MA, former special assistant to the AANA executive director, saying that AANA Past President Jan Stewart, CRNA, ARNP, had died unexpectedly. On that day the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists changed forever.
Jan Stewart's daughter, Sara, and her family could have kept their knowledge that Jan had died from an accidental selfadministered overdose of sufentanil a secret, but they instead chose to help the AANA open the door to the realization that the anesthesia community had a very serious wellness and chemical dependency problem. That led to the realization that no one is immune from the risk, and when that risk is ignored, our whole profession loses.
Wellness Program Beginnings