Glossary
Nurse Anesthetist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential nurse anesthetist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key nurse anesthetist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in nurse anesthetist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ASA class
- A patient’s anesthesia risk category.
- Capnography
- Measuring exhaled carbon dioxide.
- CRNA
- Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.
- Difficult airway
- An airway hard to manage.
- Emergence
- Waking from anesthesia.
- Hemodynamics
- Blood pressure and flow.
- Induction
- Starting anesthesia.
- Intubation
- Placing a breathing tube.
- MAC
- Monitored anesthesia care (sedation).
- Malignant hyperthermia
- A rare, dangerous reaction to anesthetics.
- NBCRNA
- National Board of Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists.
- Nerve block
- Numbing specific nerves.
- Opt-out state
- A state allowing CRNAs to practice without physician supervision for Medicare.
- PACU
- Post-anesthesia care unit.
- Regional anesthesia
- Numbing a region such as with a spinal.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Nurse Anesthetist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Nurse Anesthetist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.