Finding Yourself in CAA Wellness | Wellness Wednesdays

Have you ever searched for wellness resources that truly understand what it means to be a Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant? You're not alone.

Wellness Wednesday debuts with a candid conversation about the unique challenges and opportunities facing CAAs in their pursuit of sustainable wellbeing. As I share my personal journey from burnout to balance, I reveal how my frustration with the lack of CAA-specific wellness resources became the catalyst for creating what our profession desperately needed.

Whether you're a practicing CAA, AA student, or prospective applicant, this episode marks the beginning of a community-centered approach to wellness that finally names and validates your experience. Welcome in. 

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Chapters

• 4:17 Three Things About CAA Wellness
• 8:29 Slow Changes, Not Quick Fixes
• 12:11 Embracing Authenticity Over Perfectionism
• 14:25 Creating Resources That Name CAAs
• 18:20 Looking Forward Together

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:05

This Wellness Wednesday is brought to you by CAA Matters, the first comprehensive wellness and professionalism curriculum designed to truly support the AA student experience.

Speaker 1: 1:18

We all know AA education is streamlined to produce competent providers in a fast-paced program. Meanwhile, wellness and professionalism often get overlooked, lumped in with medical students or addressed too late. To help, caa Matters fills this gap, centering student anesthesiologist assistants and equipping them with the tools, resources and mindset shifts to succeed in school and build long, fulfilling careers. It's a turnkey curriculum, fully prepared, facilitated and supported from planning to delivery. Program leaders and AA educators can learn more, read reviews from early adopters and explore piloting CAA matters at awakenedanesthetistcom or by clicking the link in the show notes. Or by clicking the link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that the CAA profession is uniquely able to create a life by design into a podcast. If you are a practicing CAA, current AA student or someone who hopes to be one, I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. Find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. Hello Awakened Anesthetist community. This is your host, mary Jean.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast and to Wellness Wednesdays, which is a new series here during season five of the podcast, and I wanted to take this initial episode to kind of maybe debunk three things about CAA Wellness, or maybe three things about these Wellness Wednesdays episodes, so that we can all get on the same page and so that you know where I'm coming from, and I hope you decide that this is a high value place for you as well, whether you're a prospective AA, a student anesthesiologist assistant or a certified or retired anesthesiologist assistant, welcome. I'm so happy you're here, I'm so happy you found this podcast and have tuned in, so let's get into today's episode. Okay, the three things I want you to know about CAA wellness are number one. It's likely not what you think, and I just want to be very clear about the way in which I'm going to be talking about wellness here on the podcast, as well as the curriculum that I've designed the CAA Matters, professionalism and Wellness Curriculum sort of the angle that that takes, and kind of tell you early and upfront like what this will not be. And then the second point is that I am allergic to perfectionism. Now I can tell when my body is, or like my mind or my old habits are trying to make something perfect before I do it, to make something perfect before I do it. So I'm going to use this Wednesday episode to just lean into all the parts of me that are not perfect. So I will explain a little bit more about what that means and what to expect there.

Speaker 1: 5:03

And then the third thing about CAA Wellness that I really want to come across is that this is very new for us. We have almost zero wellness resources outside of what I've created on Awaken, the Nestes podcast, and outside of some of the curriculum that AA programs have created on their own. There are very, very, very few resources that specifically name CAAs or SAAs and there is almost no research. There was no research. I've actually found two little pieces of research that are like one page each, but almost no research, compared to our counterparts, anesthesiologists and CRNAs, who just have reams and reams of research and wellness resources and et cetera, et cetera. So this is new and I'm very passionate about getting the ball rolling. So let me dive into a little bit more about what that means. So let me go back to the top.

Speaker 1: 6:06

The first thing is that CAA wellness is likely not what you think or what we're going to be talking about here in the way that maybe you're thinking about it. So I really want to drive home that wellness and lasting, sustainable, sustainable well-being maybe is a better term is about slow, small changes, lots of little habit formations. There are no quick fixes. There is nothing that I know that you don't already know. Likely meaning. There is not like some secret code that I have that you don't.

Speaker 1: 6:49

I would say that this process started for me in 2018. And and still is continuing. I wouldn't say I've reached some like magical, perfect. I'm like in homeostasis of this, like well-being, work-life balance, but I am so much closer than I was in 2018. And that has again been a very slow process of intentional, small changes that I didn't even necessarily know I was making, but have accumulated and got me to a point where I am now where I'm working one day a week clinically and then I'm also hosting Awakened Anestis podcast and I have created a wellness curriculum that I have started teaching, piloting to AA programs as well as teaching outright to the pre-AA community, and so I have kind of got where I thought I could never get, which for a long time was even working part-time. I could never even imagine that I could work part-time.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But it has been slow progress, slow changes, and it's only really when I look back and I can see, oh, that's what I did to kind of get there and that's the part that I want to share on this podcast. So sort of the look back and say like, oh, it was this piece and this piece or it was this new idea that I found and incorporated over six months and led to the next thing. And so I really want to I don't know warn you maybe that this is not about supplements or, like the latest and greatest thing. This is about an exchange of information. This is about curiosity that I've had as I look into what makes me feel better or maybe what piques my interest, kind of expanding my mind into new modalities, things like meditation and breathwork and human design and the Enneagram and some pieces that not one thing solved everything, but learning little bits here and there helped me put together my best life, and so that's what we're going to be talking about on the podcast and I'm sure I will refine that message as we get going. Which leads me into my second point about CAA and wellness and this podcast, which is these episodes are going to lean really heavily into authenticity, to my real self, to this real journey, to my real self, to this real journey.

Speaker 1: 9:26

I'm kind of allergic to people who make their lives feel perfect or seem perfect and then tell you, oh, this is the way to do it, or like, especially in this wellness space or self-care space, it was hard for me to see someone who was like portraying that, like you know, having a huge put together house and perfect children, and you know, can't even like tell you what it was now because it's so far from what I like hold as valuable. But I just could tell that, number one, no one got what it meant to be CAA or understood what it felt like for me and therefore their messages never landed. And number two, I didn't want what they had. I didn't want this curated, perfect, like no failure life. I wanted curiosity and, you know, like a really intentional life, and I wanted a slow life, which I kind of didn't realize at first but definitely found my way into, and so that's what I'm going to be bringing to you. So I'm bringing, hopefully, the realest of real me, not that I'm not myself on social media or on the other podcast episodes, but you can already tell that I'm trying to bring you guys closer into my real, actual life, because that's where I want to have these wellness conversations from and, honestly, this is part of like my deepest, truest self, which is this pull towards storytelling, this pull towards sharing like an intimate moment where you know you see me and I see you, and having like a deep understanding of someone else's experience through hearing their journey, and so I'm going to be sharing authentically from that position. I'm also bringing on guests who are going to be talking about maybe one of those things I mentioned, like human design or the Enneagram or some sort of piece of wellness that maybe you've been hearing floating around, but I'm going to take that and ground that into the CAA experience, to my experience with those modalities, and offer that up to you. So I'm really excited for these episodes and to see how they all develop. You are 100% seeing the beginning of something. So I also love to point out that this is not like a final, polished version and it's very interesting even to see that progress over the podcast.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Like when I first sat down with a mic in 2020, I truly had like a horrible head cold. We were in my basement like under a blanket because we were very like hyper aware of noises and stuff. Because our kids, of course, it was 2020. Our kids were home. We had three little kids and they were screaming in the background and my husband and I I started a podcast with my husband initially were just experimenting and like the pull to do it was so intense that I just was like, no, I want to do this right now, and that's kind of what these wellness episodes feel like as well. So welcome into the realest parts of me.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Okay, the third thing I want you to know about CAA wellness and maybe the part that was the fuel or perhaps is still the fuel we'll probably dive into that more is that when I started teaching wellness to UMKC MSA program so the AA program here in Kansas City I am no longer, but I had been for a very long time adjunct faculty member there and in 2019, when I went from full-time to part-time, they changed my hours because the work that I was doing for them I couldn't do, because I wasn't in the clinic as much, I wasn't in the operating room teaching as much, and so they asked me to sort of take over this one three-hour wellness lecture on substance use disorder, which I happily did. It was kind of right at the point of my life where I was also diving into that inner landscape. I had just started finally looking at some old wounds and finding stories of people who were like overcoming hardships in their life, and I had already sort of started circling around like the addiction and recovery community in medicine because I related so much to their stories and anyway. So it was like a perfect alignment. I jumped in and from that point, realized that the curriculum that I had been handed was originally created for anesthesia residents and it was meant to be delivered over their four-year residency. And while it had some valuable perspectives and education and certainly it helped influence those early beginning learnings for me, I was pissed that it didn't mention certified anesthesiologist assistants, but yet we were using this to teach our AA students, and it was that anger and I think I was hurt.

Speaker 1: 14:24

I think I was upset and felt left out and felt like no one cares about me. And I was also in a very vulnerable place in my own life where I had just basically begged my former employer, my full-time employer, to go part-time. It felt like very professional begging. I felt like I had given them a bunch of options, like maybe I could do it this way or this way, but I just really need to find another solution. I want to stay and they just couldn't work with me. They just couldn't it felt like find the value in me as a part-time employee as opposed to a full-time employee, even though I had been there for like 12 years and I was the chief anesthetist or one of the chief anesthetists and just really would have thought they would have wanted to keep me. I think it tugged at that same hurt and so I just, you know, had a fire lit under me and I was like absolutely not, like you cannot tell me that I'm not valuable.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And every time I saw another research study that listed just CRNAs and anesthesiologists, because they're the only ones who have research done on them really? And there is one. There is a caveat there is one research study that is on certified anesthesiologist assistance and burnout, but it's pretty sparse. But anyways, I just got more mad and more mad and what has developed is that I turned that one three-hour class at UMKC AA program into like a six-month curriculum and then from there in 2023, left UMKC to take that curriculum and kind of expand it in a way that would be valuable to any AA program, and so I'm currently in the process of piloting what then became CAA Matters the wellness and professionalism curriculum to AA programs, like right now, like in two weeks. I'm doing that and I've done that this summer basically. So I am all in on this.

Speaker 1: 16:25

I can tell that my unique experiences, kind of where I came from as a CAA and my understanding of what it means to be a CAA because I'm from a CAA family and I just have a lot of history, I guess, in the profession I feel very protective over us and I also feel very motivated to change the landscape of CAA wellness and finally give us some resources that name us and are made for us. And you know there's other things I'm trying to do behind the scenes that I'm absolutely going to share here because I need your help, but maybe in a different episode. So I think that's all I want to say on this very first episode. Again, I'm really excited for this new format. I'm excited to kind of bring you a little bit closer into the real me and I hope you enjoyed this format.

Speaker 1: 17:20

You can share this episode with a friend if you loved it. If you are watching me on YouTube, you can leave a comment. That would be awesome. The YouTube platform is absolutely new for me as well, so you getting to see me is sort of another layer of vulnerability and sort of trying something new. So I'm right there with you. If you're a CAA or an SAA or a prospective who is putting themselves out there, maybe telling someone they have a dream of becoming a CAA, that can be really scary and vulnerable. That practice that you have is going to take you through the rest of your career. That practice and vulnerability. I'm not saying that it's easy. It took me weeks and weeks to finally sit down and do this first episode with you, but I don't know. I'm just grateful to be talking directly to my CAA community. I feel like you guys get it. You get me and hopefully you feel like I get you, and just I hope you come back for another episode. So all right, let's talk soon, y'all.