I would like to ask everyone to get some matters in perspective regarding this website.

When this was started about two and a half years ago, there were a few of us who were totally frustrated with the censorship, lack of respect and inaccuracies about anesthesia and CRNAs on All-Nurses. Mike decided to do something about it, thus the development of this board. As an aside, most nurses just complain about things, Mike went the direction of acting instead of complaining.

When there were just a few of us here, we debated clinical anesthesia, chided each other, learned from each other, mentored and encouraged whoever needed it, listened to personal problems and became friends. Anesthesia can become a lonely profession, so we found friendships and had some fun here.

To be honest, there are times now that I wish we were still a small group of friends and the occasional skeptic. Now, we are experiencing amazing growth and along with that, what appears to be many people with their own personal agenda and are not willing to play by the very few rules we have established.

While no one enjoys a debate better than me, I find so many of the posts to be offensive and frankly, disclose a lot about the writer that is not positive. It is tempting to "put them in their place" or to just ignore those people, I think we need some perspective.

What I want is healthy discourse, especially about clinical anesthesia and even about the professional component of nurse anesthetists. While I will defend our right to practice and our wonderful profession, I am not interested in debating ignorant people, hostile personalities or ones who have not taken the time and effort to read through the stickies and previous posts.

Also, I will fight not to have anyone hijack this board and use it for their own agenda. That is not fair nor professional.

The moderators and administrators have discretion in deleting personal attacks, foul language or advertisements. But, we tend to err on the side of free speech and let a lot of things ride.

This post is probably too long to be meaningful, but I simply want to ask everyone to get this board in perspective and to use it to contribute to the profession, learn more about it and help each other. When your personal agenda or hostility get in the way of the better good, we may need to rethink your usefulness to this board.

Jan Mannino, CRNA, JD