Job Check
Nurse Anesthetists
Administer anesthesia, monitor patient's vital signs, and oversee patient recovery from anesthesia. May assist anesthesiologists, surgeons, other physicians, or dentists. Must be registered nurses who have specialized graduate education.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Manage patients' airway or pulmonary status, using techniques such as endotracheal intubation, mechanical ventilation, pharmacological support, respiratory therapy, and extubation.Mostly human for now
- 02Respond to emergency situations by providing airway management, administering emergency fluids or drugs, or using basic or advanced cardiac life support techniques.Mostly human for now
- 03Monitor patients' responses, including skin color, pupil dilation, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, ventilation, or urine output, using invasive and noninvasive techniques.Mostly human for now
- 04Select, order, or administer anesthetics, adjuvant drugs, accessory drugs, fluids or blood products as necessary.Mostly human for now
- 05Select, prepare, or use equipment, monitors, supplies, or drugs for the administration of anesthetics.Mostly human for now
- 06Assess patients' medical histories to predict anesthesia response.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Perform or manage regional anesthetic techniques, such as local, spinal, epidural, caudal, nerve blocks and intravenous blocks.Mostly human for now
- 08Develop anesthesia care plans.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Obtain informed consent from patients for anesthesia procedures.Mostly human for now
- 10Prepare prescribed solutions and administer local, intravenous, spinal, or other anesthetics, following specified methods and procedures.Mostly human for now
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
17%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 20% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 51% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Manage patients' airway or pulmonary status, using techniques such as endotracheal intubation, mechanical ventilation, pharmacological support, respiratory therapy, and extubation.
- Respond to emergency situations by providing airway management, administering emergency fluids or drugs, or using basic or advanced cardiac life support techniques.
- Monitor patients' responses, including skin color, pupil dilation, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, ventilation, or urine output, using invasive and noninvasive techniques.