The foundations of the current Nurse Anesthesia Program can be traced to the individual hospital nurse anesthesia training programs in the late 50’s at Presbyterian Hospital and Montefiore Hospital. These two hospital programs merged in 1972 to form the University Health Center of Pittsburgh School of Anesthesia for Nurses. Under the direction of Mary DePaolis-Lutzo and Dr. Stephen Finestone the program gained national recognition as one of the finest certificate nurse anesthesia programs. In 1989 the Health Center program joined the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing and graduated the first class of MSN prepared nurse anesthetists in 1991. The program continues to use the diversity of clinical sites established by the certificate program joined with the strength of the academic curriculum in advanced practice nursing to strive to educate the highest quality nurse anesthesia practitioners.
The Nurse Anesthesia Program is part of the Department of Acute and Tertiary Care in the School of Nursing. The Nurse Anesthesia Program was ranked 2nd in the 1998 - 2000 U.S. News & World Report issues on Best Graduate Programs and recently moved up to 3rd in the rankings for 2012. The Nurse Anesthesia Program was recently re-accredited through 2020 by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Council on Accreditation. At that time a second full 10 year accreditation was received with no major or minor deficiencies noted. The School of Nursing also received a 10 year accreditation from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) through 2019.
Read
the Summary
Report of the April 1999 Accreditation Review.
