Awakened Anesthetist

Season 5 Premiere | CAA Life by Design (an update)

• Mary Jeanne, Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant • Season 5 • Episode 75

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Can you believe we are starting the 5th season?! I am honored to host the first ever podcast for the CAA community, thanks for being! If you want more, listen to my 3 original PROCESS episodes to hear all the nitty gritty details of my journey.

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Speaker 1:

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, hello Awakened Anesthetist community. Welcome to season five of Awakened Anesthetist podcast. I'm so happy you're here. Whether you are a prospective CAA, a certified anesthesiologist assistant who's working, or a student, or perhaps a retired CAA, this podcast was made for you. This is the first podcast created for our CAA community and I'm really excited to be sharing the fifth season and I thought I would use this first episode to reintroduce myself. The podcast community has changed quite a bit since the podcast started in 2021. And if you are wanting to know who the hell I am and why I'm on this microphone, I thought it might be good to kind of wind it all the way back to the beginning and then give you an update, since I had last shared one of these life updates truly in 2023. I figured it was probably time to tell you everything that's happened since then and kind of where I am now, because, yes, so much has changed and also a lot is still the same, so I wanted to get into that. But first I wanted to make mention that there is a new Awakened Anesthetist website. It's AwakenedAnesthetistcom.

Speaker 1:

I worked really hard on this three times. Actually, the first two times failed. I had other first one I tried to do completely by myself and that just started but never really went anywhere. The second time, I had a web designer help me and they kind of abandoned the project halfway and that was like two years ago and I just sort of abandoned it myself. And then, this third time, I partnered with Visible, which was a company I found through Squarespace, which is my website host, and I loved them, I loved the work they did and I I'm really, really proud to share the final result, the final website at AwakenedAnesthetistcom.

Speaker 1:

You can go there to find all my offerings, all the podcast back episodes. You can also connect with me. You can book a free AMA, a free Ask Me Anything for 10 minutes or a longer consultation if you wanted to do some more, like one-on-one coaching or question asking about your particular, maybe pre-AA, situation or maybe your career transitioner, like I am. And there's also a section for my trusted CAA partners. So these are other CAA creators who have businesses or online presences that I find really valuable myself and I wanted to share with our community as well.

Speaker 1:

As you'll see, the season five podcast sponsor Harmony Locums Staffing. Harmony is a company that is founded and owned by CAAs. They have made it possible to bring all the process episodes to you all this season. Also, they are making it possible for my family to have health insurance because, as you'll hear in this episode, I left my employed position that was giving me health insurance. So thank you, harmony Anesthesia, from many levels, but I'm just really excited to have just this one place, awakenedanesthetistcom, that I can send everyone to find all things Awakened Anesthetist, caa Matters, the podcast. Of course, I'm still on social media. I've actually sort of got more into posting on Instagram, so that's a great place for behind the scenes, for some motivational content, for more CAA wellness related content as well, and then you can also find me on LinkedIn, so I look forward to connecting with you all. Okay, so when I was planning this very first episode, I hadn't really remembered where I left you all off. So if you are a longtime listener, you know that I have episodes called Process Episodes. This is really the heart of AwakendAnestes podcast. These are the conversations with other CAAs. So I'm in conversation with other CAAs and they are serving as sort of expanders as to what's possible as a CAA.

Speaker 1:

The main reason really I started this podcast was because I was at a point of my career where I wanted to work part-time and there was no one in my immediate CAA community who was working part-time that I knew well or felt related to in a way that it was like, okay, if they can do it, I can do it. And so I had to go outside the CAA community to have that inspiration, to find the blueprint, to figure out what steps to take, and luckily there were CRNAs and anesthesiologists and PAs that were kind of close enough to me that I kind of got sort of found my way, but really I just stumbled into it and I realized through that process that or maybe I planted a seed in my mind, because I certainly did not start the podcast right away in 2018 when I was going through that career transition, but I think it planted the seed that this community deserves media and content and voices from inside the community sharing what it's like, what's possible, where you can go as a CAA. And so I filed that away. And so I think where I want to start this story, if you're totally new, is to tell you that there are three process episodes laying out my journey into becoming a CAA. So, like all the way from, I guess, probably high school, undergrad, that whole mindset, and how I found out about being a CAA and how I decided to become a CAA and which school I decided to go to, on through working my first full-time job. I was there for 11 years. I was blissfully happy, basically until I wasn't, and then in 2019, I made a big career transition to work part-time and then in 2021, I was fired from that dream part-time job, which I outline in the third process episode, and basically by the end of that third process episode. I share with you that I had a new job. I was working at the same surgery center. I was now working two days instead of three days and I was working for a larger corporation like a larger hospital. I had previously been employed by a private anesthesia group and that's where I left the story off.

Speaker 1:

So I really suggest as opposed to me saying that all again that you go back and listen. I give a lot of details. I talk about the money, like the actual dollars and financial transparency. That I think is important when you're talking about a big career shift or talking about leaving a job or going to a different job or any of that type of conversation. I just think so many people don't talk about the money because it's a little bit awkward, but I just leaned in and laid it all out there. So I suggest you go back and listen.

Speaker 1:

But a brief high-level overview is that in 2017, I had my third child I have right now I have an 11-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old but in 2017, that 7-year-old was just born, I realized my full-time job and that schedule was not sustainable for the life. That was really going to be something I wanted to continue forever. I realized that something needed to change. I wanted more time to be with my kids, with myself. I wanted to move more slowly. I wanted to regain some parts of me that I felt had gotten lost when everything became about going to work and working as a CAA and then really nothing else, and so I started this big sort of self-discovery process that led me oh so many ways and places, but one of them is that I ended up starting a podcast.

Speaker 1:

In 2020, really in the thick of the pandemic my husband and I were thrown together at home for the first time a lot and we were not in a great place and we were looking for ways to heal the like fractures between us as well as become more connected in this environment the pandemic environment, as well as having three small kids at home all day, every day environment that was really pulling us apart. And so I got this intuition, this hit to start a podcast, and I asked my husband if he wanted to start one. He said absolutely. Well, he didn't really say absolutely. He said like sure that that's fine, and so I kind of got everything going. We recorded our first podcast, called Growth Minded Marriage. We recorded it in our basement, like under a blanket, I had a horrible cold. That's not the episode. That is the first, if you can go and want to search for it, because it was so bad I could not like, truly it could not be shown. But that was the start of it and I just fell in love with podcasting.

Speaker 1:

I have always been a storyteller. I've always loved hearing stories, talking to people, asking questions. That's always been who I am and podcasting became a way at that point for me to learn more about myself. Definitely I was someone who now I would describe it would say they're like numb from the nose down, like I just didn't know myself very well and I was all in my head. It was all about, you know, like that type A perfectionism, achievement, brain sort of science, minded. Everything that sort of worked well for me as a CAA and I really went on a very soulful spiritual journey of discovering myself, reconnecting with my husband, reconnecting with who I am. And when my husband and I decided that our podcast was coming to a natural end, I did not want to stop podcasting and I decided to continue podcasting but to create a podcast for my beloved CAA community. I have always loved being a CAA. I still love being a CAA. I still work clinically, I still give anesthesia. It brings me joy. It just it honestly is a profession that makes me feel more like me when I do it. I just didn't want to do it every single day. I wanted to do the other things that make me feel like me, and so I started podcasting specifically for this profession. I called it Awaken Anesthetist Podcast and sort of started that all in 2021.

Speaker 1:

In the background of all of that, I was transitioning from full-time career to part-time career in 2019. I was working three days a week at a surgery center, as I briefly mentioned. I was then fired. A week at a surgery center, as I briefly mentioned. I was then fired. So the private anesthesia group that employed me left, pulled out of that contract at the surgery center and went back basically to their main regional hospital and left all of the anesthesia personnel, which was myself and two other CAAs at the surgery center, without a job when our contract ended in 90 days and what ended up happening is that the large hospital in that town that's sort of like an hour away from Kansas City decided to buy up the surgery center contract the anesthesia contract and that anesthesia department absorbed the three CAAs, they ended up hiring another CRNA, so they're made four of us, and then they floated their anesthesiologist to the surgery center.

Speaker 1:

When I took that job, I negotiated a new contract where I was working two days a week, really about eight-hour shifts two eight-hour shifts a week and I negotiated that I would be on their group health care plans. So I paid, of course, a premium, but I was allowed as a 20-ish hour a week worker to well, that's not 20, I guess 16-hour a week worker to be on their health care plan, and I was blissfully happy. I signed a sign-on bonus. They gave me a $12,500 sign-on bonus for three years and when I signed I thought life could possibly not get better than this. I can't believe that I found this two-day-a-week job with health insurance. It was everything I thought I couldn't have. When I sat down in like 2018 and first had the dream of one day maybe working part-time and being able to explore the other parts of me and be home more and sort of juggle all the parts of me more seamlessly, and I just I was so, so happy, so, so fulfilled, and that's really where the last process episode that I'll link all of this in the show notes. That's where it leaves you off.

Speaker 1:

And basically once I was about two years into that three-year contract with the new anesthesia group at my old surgery center, I was really deeply into teaching wellness at UMKC MSA program. I have been, or had been, an adjunct professor at UMKC MSA program, their AA program here in Kansas City, since it opened in 2008. That was the reason I moved from Cleveland Ohio to Missouri because Missouri had just opened to CAAs. They just opened this master's program and they needed CAAs to come, move to Missouri to teach clinically, to work as CAAs and then to help be part of the school. So I was one of the CAAs who said yes to that opportunity and it was one of the best decisions of my life. I was very, very happy. I did many things, teaching the IV rotation, teaching sim labs, and then kind of transitioned when I went part-time into this wellness area of their curriculum.

Speaker 1:

And once I got into the wellness curriculum I realized how lacking it is, how lacking it still is for AA programs, for the larger CAA community. I saw the stark difference between the resources that anesthesiologists have and CRNAs have and PAs have and nurses have and basically every other profession besides CAAs, down to the fact that, you know, the Quad A website for us doesn't even have a wellness resource tab, we don't have a wellness task force. We just are still in that very infantile phase of this level of support for our profession and there's, I think, reasons for that, and that's a whole other podcast, but certainly something that I tuned into and I really the main emotion I felt was pissed. I was just really hurt and upset and angry that no one had thought of us, that no one was taking care of us, that there was not some larger entity. It was kind of like the COVID thing that happened, where we all realized collectively, like who's running this ship? Oh, no one. Like no one's really watching out for us. That means we have to watch out for ourselves.

Speaker 1:

It was that same epiphany, but in this CAA Wellness Avenue, and I just dove headfirst in to teaching this curriculum at UMKC. I expanded it. I also was starting to put the pieces together of just the culture of anesthesia and being a CAA that I had heard whispers of and seen around me, but because I wasn't seeing the whole picture from an outsider perspective, I just thought, oh well, oh yeah, that person, you know, was struggling with substance abuse or like had taken drugs from the hospital. Well, that's like a one-off thing. Or, yeah, okay, one of our students did overdose in the bathroom, but like, oh well, they had this or that going on too. And you know, yes, we had a student who lost their life to propofol whether it was, you know, a suicide or an accidental death, but you know that was an isolated circumstance.

Speaker 1:

And then, once I kind of got in, I was like, oh, these are all related, these are all because no one's talking about this and there's nowhere to go for help and no resources. And our other anesthesia counterparts, anesthesiologists and CRNAs all have these same problems. Like this is systemic within the world of anesthesia as well as in healthcare in general, of course. Then COVID brought to light all the burnout statistics and all of the like. Frontline workers are walking a razor thin edge between you know, being able to work and totally incapacitated in in bed, and so I just couldn't turn away from it.

Speaker 1:

And then, in 2022, I had one of my closest mentors suffer from a substance use disorder and go into treatment, and this person was a CAA and just it deeply, deeply affected me in a way where I just said absolutely no more. I refuse to tolerate this ever at all, like I am now shifting my focus to create wellness resources, to move the needle forward. I didn't know what that exactly meant. There were so many things I could do and that was, you know, 2022, 2023, figuring out what I can uniquely do, which meant trying a whole bunch of things Got a mindfulness meditation teacher training. I took a mindfulness-based stress reduction eight-week course. I got a certification in mindful practice and medicine. I took a whole bunch of online courses and classes. You know, did my own research because I was creating this curriculum for UMKC AA programs. I started networking within this community and I just didn't let go of this.

Speaker 1:

I wasn't sure where I was going, but I kept stepping forward because I was so motivated by this. I think, being pissed and being angry and being hurt and, you know, I think that can be a really great motivator. Also, it's not sustainable Like I can't stay angry, I can't stay pissed and I would say that's not really the motivation I have now, but it is what fueled me for the first couple years. For sure, because I was juggling, you know, all my other responsibilities and then trying to start this wellness initiative in the CAA profession as well. And then I realized, as my three-year contract was coming up, I was going to be a wellness coach, and I was going to be a wellness coach and I was going to up that I was not going to be able to stay working at the surgery center job, even at two days a week, and pour my time and energy into creating CAA wellness initiatives and live at the pace of life that I have had.

Speaker 1:

At that point realized was where I really wanted to live, which is a much slower pace of life. I don't want to be booked 100% of the time. I want to live in a way where I can wake up in the morning, sort of feel out what my energy is, choose how my energy aligns with whatever projects I have going on that I can pick from. There's no one breathing down my neck, there's no one saying you have to be at work at 5 am today because we're doing a cardiac case. I can, you know, get more sleep and just. I just wanted a life that I could control in a way that is hard to control if I was going to the operating room, and so I took some time to realize that I would be leaving my dream part-time, two-day-a-week job with health insurance, and I had to really figure out what that would look like. Because let's talk about money, money we don't want to. I don't want to, like tell you this whole story and not tell you the reality of I needed money to survive.

Speaker 1:

I, at that point, was still the primary breadwinner. My husband is an amazing antiques dealer. He has been since he's 11. He works part-time as well now and at that point was kind of reprioritizing his time as well to try to see how much he could get done and how little time in terms for, like, how much money he could make, or if he could make his, his needed salary in less time if he, like reworked his working habits. Anyways, yes, he works part time as well. I'm not married to someone who, like, is a gazillionaire and doing all this.

Speaker 1:

But I realized that I needed more control and more freedom and I also realized I did not want to not give anesthesia. And what did that mean? How did I now take the next step? And of course, I thought, oh well, I'll work locums. But what had happened is that when I moved from that three-day-a-week position with a private group to the two-day-a-week position with a larger organization.

Speaker 1:

I decided to have another backup plan and I took a PRN position at the large academic hospital in Kansas City. They need people fairly regularly just because they're such a large institution and I had already at one point thought I might work their PRN. So I basically just revisited that in my mind, said yes to it, applied and was able to start working PRN about a once a month-ish rate while I was working my two-day-a-week job and I did that for about a year and during that time they always needed me. They never called me off. I had such a wonderful experience working PRN there that I thought, you know, maybe I can bet on them and on me that if I were to just work their PRN and maybe work one day a week, I could, you know, bank on them always needing me PRN which is a risk and I could make enough money because the PRN rates have gone up and up and up since COVID.

Speaker 1:

I'm now getting $200 an hour PRN for this hospital and maybe I could make enough money that I could afford to buy my health insurance off the marketplace, which is what we're doing. I currently pay almost $1,700 a month for family health insurance for myself, my husband, my three kids and I kind of ran all the numbers, figured this all out and said, okay, and I kind of ran all the numbers, figured this all out and said, okay, I am going to quit my dream part-time, two-day-a-week job, I am going to work one day a week at this large academic facility, prn, and I am going to use the next year, two years, to pour into the CAA Wellness Initiative, to pour into where I can uniquely make impact, pour into the podcast and figure out if there is a way that I can do both, that I can make some money from teaching and the podcast and make money from, of course, working as a CAA, and have those two things meet in the middle so that I can live my dream life, which is doing lots of things from many different buckets having impact, telling stories, working anesthesia, giving anesthesia, making enough money to support the lifestyle we want. Which is another thing that I've done is figure out exactly what type of lifestyle we need to be happy, and I'm talking like how many times do we want to go out to dinner? What types of vacations do we want to take? Do we want to take European vacations or do we want to take camping trips in Missouri. You know very, very specific and I decided to take the risk.

Speaker 1:

I turned in my notice. I stayed all the way up to three years because I not have the ability to give back the $12,500. I had used that money already and I wasn't unhappy. So I just kind of made that my end date and so I ended up quitting August of 2024 and immediately went into working one day a week PRN. I actually worked two days a week for some of that because I wanted. I was nervous that you know, I wouldn't have enough money or they wouldn't need me or I needed a, you know, larger sort of FU fund, and that's what I've been doing since August of 2024. It is now August of 2025. And I am still working now really one day a week at that PRN academic hospital.

Speaker 1:

I am listening, you are listening to season five of the Wakeness's podcast, so you know I'm still doing that. I have moved forward on CAA Matters, which was born from the UMKC MSA wellness initiatives that I had made and started the curriculum development that I had started with the support of UMKC MSA wellness initiatives that I had made and started the curriculum development that I had started with the support of UMKC and with their blessing, in 2023, I actually quit my adjunct professor appointment to take that time and energy that I was giving to UMKC's 15 students to see if I could develop a larger, broader program that any AA program could implement, and that has become CAA Matters, which is the first comprehensive wellness and professionalism curriculum for SAAs, for the CAA community, that I've currently been piloting this summer summer of 2025, with several NSU schools, and in two weeks, I'm actually about to leave for VCOM Carolina, which is one of the newest AA programs that has decided to implement the pilot program, and so things are moving along. The other interesting thing that's happened is that I now have support. I have a team of three CAA Matters interns Adri, tiffany and Victoria shout out to you. They are all pre-AAs themselves, who answered my call on Instagram when I said hey, I'm looking to hire three interns. This is what I need you for, and I had over 100 applications from the pre-AA community. I selected these three women and it's been the best decision ever. Of course, they very quickly proved to me that they were so much more valuable than I could have ever imagined. They've really elevated CAA Matters as well as helped me create the PreAA Matters version of this wellness curriculum that we are currently teaching to two cohorts of Pre-A's. Right now we're in the middle of it and I just am so deeply fulfilled and appreciative of these women that I wanted to give them a little shout out here.

Speaker 1:

And the season five of Awaken Anestis podcast is again just going to be a celebration of our CAA community. It is going to be a sharing of stories of amazing CAAs who are expanders for me, for you, in the process episodes. We have the premier process episode coming soon. I'm so excited to share the process CAAs this season. I've also created a new Wellness Wednesday sort of mini series where I'm so excited to share the process CAAs. This season I've also created a new Wellness Wednesday sort of mini series where I'm going to be funneling all of my wellness teachings. These are going to be things like micro practices and nervous system regulation and then some bigger concept ideas that I've found along my own journey that I've taken from and kind of helped shape my best life with more information. So these are things like manifestation work and the Enneagram and human design, and we'll see how far we get, because I do know that I want to take things slowly with this community.

Speaker 1:

I could not dive into a lot of this sort of maybe higher level self-care wellness inner work right away. I needed to start with some more really grounding practices and even the word grounding I don't know that I completely understood when I first started, but I really needed to learn more about myself, and so I am going to progress these wellness episodes in the way that I learned about my own journey into wellness, which was really reclaiming of who I am kind of an inner journey of healing old wounds and figuring out what I really wanted. Figuring out where I was saying yes to other people and saying no to myself and switching that around and just figuring out what life I truly wanted to live and putting my time and energy into doing what I needed to do in order to live that life. And I will also say that that life has changed. Like that life isn't the same, which is why I wanted to do this update Because, again in 2018, I thought absolutely my best lived life is working three days a week, and I couldn't imagine ever finding a job that would pay me enough that I could work three days a week and then, as soon as I had that and loved it.

Speaker 1:

You know the dream changed. I thought, ok, well, if I can have this, maybe I can have this other two day a week job with insurance. And I could have never imagined making enough money to, you know, sustain when I first started at 24, I made more money then but I am working on projects and initiatives that fill me up so fully and completely that I don't need to spend money on sort of some of the things that just like filled up my cup quickly or like were those fast hits, because I move about my days in such a content satisfied way and I always have something to look forward to that. You know my family can survive on the type of lifestyle that working one day a week as a CAA can provide, and so I'm really excited to allow you into a little bit more of my real self this season. When the first CAA Wellness Wednesday episode comes out on Wednesdays, you will see that you're going to see a different version of me. You're going to see a little bit more into my real self.

Speaker 1:

It's part of how I want to show up this season on Awaken Anesthetist podcast. It is also the type of wellness that I want to talk about. I don't want to talk about perfect wellness. I want to talk about wellness that takes time and is small, habit changes and is, you know, because one person talked to another person, you had a good conversation and you pulled this thing that you maybe want to try and oh, if she it, maybe I can do it. Like that's the type of wellness that moved the needle for me, and so that's what I want to bring to this community.

Speaker 1:

Have I said I'm happy you're here, I'm so happy to be restarting Awaken and Assist podcast. I just love, love, love being on mic connecting with you. It feels like I'm talking to you, know my community, my friends. I can imagine who's on the other side of this mic. It feels super comfortable. So I'm just so grateful to have the opportunity. If you love this episode, I would be honored if you would share it with another CAA, saa or pre-AA in your life another CAA, saa or pre-AA in your life. That's how the community grows. You can also go to Awakened Anesthetist podcast to get on my mailing list, to get on the Mindful Connections mailing list, which is starting up again in September, and all things. Awakened Anesthetist can be found there or on Instagram at Awakened Anesthetist. All right, thanks for being here. Let's talk soon, y'all.

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Mary Jeanne Roberts, CAA

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