Mary Shirk Marienau APRN, CRNA, PhD

Dr Marienau, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and a Career Educator Consultant, completed her nursing studies at Allen College, Waterloo, Iowa, in 1971 and then obtained her B.A. in science at the University of Northern Iowa in 1976. She completed Mayo Clinic’s Nurse Anesthesia Program in 1979, obtained her Master of Science degree from Winona State in 1985, and her PhD in adult education from the University of Minnesota in 2011.

She joined Mayo Clinic in 1979 as a CRNA where she was a Mayo staff and supervisor CRNA for 20 years. While a full-time clinical nurse anaesthetist, she had a special interest in the education of student anaesthetists and providing anaesthesia for the pediatric, craniofacial, and pediatric liver transplant patients. She helped to develop the initial pediatric anaesthesia transplant protocols at Mayo. Throughout the past 40 years as a nurse anaesthetist, Dr Marienau has taught a wide variety of courses and topics, including Pharmacology, Pediatrics, Professional Dimensions, Advanced Pathophysiology, Research Methods, Case Conferences, and Orientation to Clinical Anesthesia. She was named Assistant Program Director of Mayo’s Nurse Anesthesia Program in 1991 and in 1997 became the Mayo Clinic Director of Post Graduate Education for CRNAs and the Master of Nurse Anesthesia Program. She graduated from the first class of Master of Nurse Anesthesia students in 1998. She spearheaded the eight-year process that developed the Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences, Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice (DNAP) degree. The program accepted its first DNAP students in 2014 and graduated its first DNAP class in January 2018.

Dr Marienau has authored or co-authored numerous articles, which focused on multiple aspects of clinical practice. Her other areas of investigation and publication have highlighted education processes for both student anaesthetists and CRNAs. Her original PhD research resulted in the creation of grounded theory, as described in her dissertation titled Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists’ Professional Recertification Process: A Grounded Theory. She has been involved in Mayo Clinic research instruction and as co-investigator for more than 100 research projects. These investigations used a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, including retrospective and prospective research, surveys, and focus groups.