TORONTO - The province is creating two new health care jobs to reduce surgical wait times caused by shortage of anesthesiologists, Health Minister George Smitherman said in a release Saturday.
The two new roles of anesthesia assistants and nurse practitioners-anesthesia, a role open to registered nurses who pursue this specialized degree, will be teamed with a lead anesthesiologist to make up the anesthesia care teams.
The teams are being introduced at pilot sites across the province including the London Health Sciences Centre, The Sault Area Hospital, Halton Healthcare Services, Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Southeastern Ontario Medical Organization in Kingston, the Ottawa Hospital, and a few hospitals in Toronto.
The assistants will help to provide technical and operational support to the anesthesiologist in an operating room, allowing the anesthesiologist to supervise a few procedures at the same time.
The first class of assistants recently graduated from Ontario's only anesthesia certificate program offered at Toronto's Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences
Currently, only 846 of the 20,000 physicians in the province are anesthesiologists, about 100 fewer than needed.
