President
NBCRNA
Pearland, Texas, United States
Garry Brydges, Ph.D., DNP, BScN, MBA, MHA, APRN, CRNA, ACNP-BC, FAANA, FAAN is the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Division of Anesthesia, Critical Care, & Pain Medicine Director of Quality and Outcomes, where he is incorporating machine learning and neural network algorithms into a Perioperative Outcomes Group Conceptual Framework to predict oncologic patient outcomes and fiscal implications. In his clinical role, he provides anesthesia services for complex oncologic procedures across the lifespan. He is adjunct faculty at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston Nurse Anesthesia Program, Baylor College of Medicine Nurse Anesthesia Program, Texas Woman’s University Nursing Graduate Programs, and adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University - Shaughnessy Nurse Leadership Academy. He teaches across numerous dimensions of nursing, including clinical anesthesia, quality improvement, healthcare economics, healthcare policy, governance and leadership, and global healthcare.
He earned his Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Alberta with a critical care certification, Master of Science in Nursing - Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (focus cardiovascular surgery and pulmonary medicine) at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston, Master of Science in Nurse Anesthesia at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston, Doctor of Nursing Practice at Texas Christian University Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences (focus in Preoperative Considerations for the Heart Failure Patient with Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy), Executive Masters of Business Administration at Texas Woman’s University, Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing Science (focusing in Financial Management and Economics in Healthcare Delivery) at Texas Woman’s University, Masters of Healthcare Administration at Texas Woman’s University (led a leadership team in the national Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME) contest with a first-place finish for their work on redesigning and funding the Texas Health Resources Network to offer health services in rural underserved communities), and a Certification in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at University of Texas at Austin McCombs Business School. He completed an executive education course, Strategy for Value-Based Healthcare Delivery, at the Harvard Business School with Robert Kaplan and Michael E Porter and a Coldiron Senior Nurse Leader Executive Fellowship at Case Western Reserve University Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing in the Shaughnessy Nurse Leadership Academy. Dr. Brydges is board-certified as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) and an Adult Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP).
Dr. Brydges has held educational and leadership roles across various healthcare settings. He previously was the Chief CRNA at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Anesthesia for 17 years, where he transformed a group of 36 CRNAs into a leading subspecialty anesthesia team of 120 CRNAs and served as the chair of APRN credentialing and privileging committee APRN Quality and Safety Committees for multiple terms. He sat on the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston advisory committee for Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Education. He was an advisor to 12 DNP projects focusing on quality improvement and cost of care using time-driven activity-based costing strategies, resulting in more than $1 million in annual savings across non-OR anesthesia sites.
He was recently appointed Vice President of the National Council on Certification and Recertification for Nurse Anesthetists (NBCRNA). He was the 79th president of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 2019 and President of The Texas Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 2013. He has over a decade of global work in nursing focused on creating APRN roles across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark.
He is well-published in textbook chapters and journals in areas such as Health Policy and Advanced Practice Nursing: Impact & Implications, Oncologic Critical Care, Nurse Leadership and Management, and periodicals like AANA Journal, Journal of Nursing Administration (JONA), AACN Advanced Critical Care Journal, Current Oncology Journal, among many more. He has provided over 400 lectures nationally and globally on topics ranging from leadership, APRN policy development, and healthcare economics to APRN principles and practice. In 2018, he was the 36th CRNA inducted as a Fellow into the American Academy of Nursing for his work in Opioid-Sparing Strategies in anesthesia. In March 2021, he was selected as a Fellow of the inaugural Coldiron Senior Nurse Leader Executive class at Case Western Reserve University led by the AAN living legend Dr. Joyce Fitzpatrick. In August 2021, he was inducted as an inaugural fellow of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists for his leadership nationally and globally, contributing to the nurse anesthesia profession and expanding its future.
Disclosure information not submitted.
NBCRNA Update: MAC Program, Leading the Industry with Longitudinal Assessment (1 Class A CE)
Saturday, August 9, 2025
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT