Where do you currently practice?
I work at UCI Medical Center in Orange, CA a 400+ bed acute care hospital providing tertiary and quaternary care, a Level-1 Trauma center, and research and teaching location for the UC Irvine School of Medicine.
What are your favorite cases or anesthesia specialty?
I love being a nurse anesthetist! I enjoy my role in perioperative patient management and safety. Second, I enjoy teaching. I am passionate and embrace my responsibility as the Clinical Director for SRNAs. My students are included in our practice culture and part of our amazing team.
What is the most rewarding part of being a CRNA?
Everything! I am so blessed to find a career that I love.
What are your passions outside of work?
I am happily married for 25 years. We were blessed with twin boys, Carson and Brian, a dynamic duo of energy and adventure. Yearly we visit the Big Island of Hawaii where we snorkel, kayak, hike, ride mountain bikes, and zipline “aloha style”. We’re foodies. Our motto: “Everything tastes better with bacon and hot sauce!”
Is there any research, thesis, practice projects, missions, or other anesthesia related work you would like to share with our community?
I completed my doctoral capstone project in goal directed therapy (GDT); a systematic review which compared goal directed fluid management with traditional methods. The traditional method of fluid therapy is guided by an algorithmic approach taking account preoperative deficits, maintenance requirements and third space loss. This method has had a sustained influence on didactic education and guided clinical practice regardless of existing comorbidities. Evidence based practice with GDT showed this method resulted in excessive administration of fluid volume, increased patient complications and morbidities. After completing my DNAP from Texas Wesleyan University in 2012, I continued to work beside Dr. Maxime Cannesson at UCI Medical Center in his research on GDT and in 2014 I published a chapter in his book titled “Perioperative Hemodynamic Monitoring and Goal Directed Therapy; From Theory to Practice”.