The School of Nurse Anesthesia exceeded national accreditation standards on the first try and received 10 years of accreditation.Kay Sanders, the director of the School of Nurse Anesthesia, said she discovered the school received 10 years of accreditation Tuesday after talking to the director of the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia.

Paulette Burns, dean of the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, said a 10-year accreditation is the maximum amount of years a program can be accredited.

“I’m very pleased to be the dean at a time when this great accomplishment has occurred,” Burns said.

If a school does not have credentials, the graduates cannot take the National Certification Examination for Nurse Anesthesia to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist, Sanders said.

Sanders said when a school for nurse anesthesia is created, it must receive permission to be temporarily accredited by the council in order to accept students. The temporary accreditation lasts for one year after the first class graduates.

After the first class graduated in December 2005, Sanders said the council sent on-site reviewers to look at the school in April 2006. She said the school was required to submit a written self-study about the required standards for accreditation with specific examples of how the school had met them.

The standards concern issues such as how the school fits in with the vision and goals of TCU, the quality of faculty and students and the demographics of the clinical sites where students are registered resident nurses, Sanders said.

One of the standards the school is required to demonstrate is the mission statement, Sanders said. She said the school demonstrates this by making the community better through improving administration of anesthetics.

The School of Nurse Anesthesia is now the fourth largest program of its kind in the country, Burns said.

Bryan Keller, a first-year graduate student of nurse anesthesia, said he is proud of the school for the accreditation and it will help him in the professional world after graduation.

“Truthfully, we weren’t surprised when we found out they got 10 years,” Keller said.

Brian Aydell, also a first-year graduate student in the school, said he came to TCU because of the reputation of Sanders and the school’s faculty.

“That’s just telling you that they’ve put something together that’s really strong and is going to be productive and successful,” Aydell said.

Now that the program is accredited, Sanders said, the school can now focus on getting a good research program going.