Laura Garcia Ramirez, a third-year nurse anesthesia student at the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS), was selected by the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA) Education Committee as the 2021 AANA student writing contest winner for her submission Acute and Chronic Post-Thoracotomy Neuropathic Pain: At-Risk Population, Prevention, and Treatment.
Garcia Ramirez, a trauma- and critical care-certified RN, selected the topic to address the clinical issue of patients who suffer from chronic pain following thoracic surgery. “Thoracotomies have chronic pain prevalence as high as 91 percent,” she explains.
During her rotation at a local hospital where many thoracic surgeries were done, Garcia Ramirez noticed that the physician anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists did not mention and rarely implemented chronic pain prevention strategies for patients undergoing these procedures. “It is a true clinical issue, so I decided to continue researching it and help disseminate information to nurse anesthetists and students,” she says.
According to Garcia Ramirez, despite comorbidities that make it difficult to institute analgesia regimens for thoracic surgery patients, “anesthesia providers working alongside surgeons can identify patients at risk for acute and chronic neuropathic pain preoperatively in order to instill interventions intraoperatively and provide early treatment options.”
Instead of a single preventative strategy, she recommends a multimodal approach. “Each patient is unique,” notes Garcia Ramirez, who has been working on the topic of post-thoracotomy neuropathic pain for two years under the mentorship of Greta Mitzova-Vladinov, associate professor of clinical and associate director of the nurse anesthesia program at SONHS. Garcia Ramirez first presented on this topic during the 2020 AANA Annual Congress. The writing award was announced in the AANA’s “SRNA Digest” on August 19, and published on the national organization’s website.
“This is the first time a SONHS student has been selected for this honor,” says Mitzova-Vladinov, AANA’s incoming Simulation Sub-committee chair. “Dr. Gonzalez and I, along with the rest of Laura’s faculty and peers, are so proud of her accomplishment. In addition to being a skillful writer, Laura has been an AANA Foundation Student Advocate for the past two years, serving as a liaison between the Foundation and the SONHS Nurse Anesthesia Program to promote scholarship and professional growth among her colleagues.”
Set to graduate in December, Garcia Ramirez credits her coauthor and mentor Mitzova-Vladinov; Juan E. Gonzalez, professor of clinical and director of the nurse anesthesia program; and Nicole Gonzaga Gomez, assistant professor of clinical, for their unwavering support throughout her time at SONHS.
Another AANA accomplishment involves second-year nurse anesthesia student Nicholas Badali. Mitzova-Vladinov reports that Badali’s poster, Anesthesia Considerations for Leadless Pacemakers, received the most views during the AANA Annual Congress, which took place virtually from August 13 to 17.
