WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – The Nurse Anesthesia program at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was awarded a 10-year accreditation by the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs. The council recognized the program’s achievement by noting on the review, “…very few programs are granted accreditation with no progress report required. Even fewer programs have achieved the maximum accreditation of ten years.”
“This accreditation period is the maximum possible under our accreditation system and speaks very highly of the quality of our program,” said Michael Rieker, D.N.P. (Doctor of Nursing Practice), C.R.N.A., director of the Nurse Anesthesia Program.
U.S. News and World Report ranked the program among the top 10 anesthesia programs in the country. The nurse anesthesia program, the oldest in North Carolina and one of the oldest in the country, has graduated more than 600 nurse anesthetists since 1942. Nearly 100 applicants, from all over the country, are interviewed each year for the program’s 25 available positions.
Historically the program has received maximum accreditation since 1952 and its graduates have achieved outstanding success on their certifying board exams.
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Media Contacts: Lisa Long, lclong@wfubmc.edu, Shannon Koontz, shkoontz@wfubmc.edu, or Karen Richardson, krchrdsn@wfubmc.edu, at (336) 716-4587.
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine. The system comprises 1,187 acute care, psychiatric, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and is consistently ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report.