The Department of Veterans Affairs has proposed a new National Standards of Practice that eliminate anesthesiologists from the proven team-based model of anesthesia care. VA has proposed moving to a nurse-only model of anesthesia care that lowers the standard of care for Veterans compared to care civilians receive.

It’s wrong for VA to put Veterans’ lives at risk by proposing to replace highly trained physician anesthesiologists with nurses in surgery. Surgery is inherently dangerous, and VA’s proposal threatens the lives of Veterans by eliminating physician anesthesiologists from the surgical team, replacing them with nurse anesthetists and denying Veterans’ access to the highest quality anesthesia care.