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Gonzaga expands nurse anesthesiology program, CRNAs training will move to UW medical school building in 2026

Students attending the University of Washington-Gonzaga University Health Partnership tour its 840 building in June 2022. Now, the UW School of Dentistry for its Regional Initiatives in Dental Education, partnering with Eastern Washington University, has agreed to lease the fourth floor and construct an oral health training center for expanding this summer and having more students train to become dentists, primarily for rural areas. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review)
By Amanda Sullender amandas@spokesman.com(509) 459-5455

Amid a shortage of nurse anesthesiologists, Gonzaga University is expanding its Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice.

Founded in 1917 in Spokane, the school’s nurse anesthesiology degree is the only such program in Washington state. Plans announced Thursday would expand each year’s class from 28 to 40 while moving the program to the UW School of Medicine beginning next year.

Demand from applicants has long outnumbered the small class sizes of the program. As of September, 475 people applied to be among the most recent cohort of 28 – a 50% increase in applicants from the year prior.

The program is the “major supplier” for nurse anesthesiologists in Spokane and the greater region, said program director Scot Pettey.

“It is a 36-month program start to finish. They learn all types of anesthesia, how to administer it, putting people to sleep and waking them up,” he said. “We send our graduates all over the country to practice, but the majority end up in the state of Washington.

Since 1977, the program has partnered with Providence to allow the budding Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists clinical rotation within facilities like Sacred Heart Hospital.

“This partnership has a long history of growing anesthesia providers for our whole region, and we believe investing in its continued growth is really important to the future of patient care across Eastern Washington,” Providence Inland Northwest CEO Susan Stacey said in a statement.

CRNAs are in high demand across the country, though the shortage of those in the profession has fallen in recent years. According to the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology, there were 10.7% more jobs available than there were licensed CRNAs in 2017. That gap had fallen to 4.2% by 2025.

Julie Wolter Dean, Gonzaga health sciences dean, hopes the expanded DNAP program will help meet this unmet need for anesthesiologists.

“There is a critical shortage in anesthesiology. Access has become even more critical in recent years, and anticipated to become even more severe,” she said.

With completion scheduled for the summer of 2026, the new facilities will build out more than 8,700 square feet of undeveloped space on the fourth floor of the UW School of Medicine to accommodate the DNAP nursing program.

The move is made possible by the UW-GU Health Partnership, which led the universities to jointly open the medical school in 2016. The DNAP program will share the floor with Eastern Washington University’s Rural Initiative Dental Education program, which just started teaching out of the building in recent weeks.