Nurse Anesthetists

Minimal Risk
Low High

Explore safer careers (2)

Lower estimated automation risk

Acute Care Nurses
7% automation risk | Minimal Risk
More jobs
5.4 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Applies inpatient assessment, medication safety, clinical monitoring, patient education, documentation, and interdisciplinary handoffs.

Critical Care Nurses
7% automation risk | Minimal Risk
More jobs
5.2 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Directly reuses airway awareness, hemodynamic monitoring, vasoactive medications, alarms, documentation, and high-acuity patient care.

Alternative careers

Related career paths that build on similar skills and experience

Anesthesiologist Assistants
21% automation risk | Low Risk
Higher growth More jobs
View career
Why it fits

Reuses anesthesia equipment, induction support, monitoring, airway procedures, OR workflow, and physician-led care model knowledge.

Respiratory Therapists
19% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Higher growth More jobs
View career
Why it fits

Applies airway management, ventilation, oxygen therapy, patient monitoring, equipment checks, and emergency response.


Share your results with friends and family.

Occupation snapshot

What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
8.0/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

12% (Minimal Risk)

Minimal Risk (0-20%): This occupation appears difficult to replace end-to-end with current or near-future automation, including AI software and robotics. Roles in this range usually depend on human judgement, creativity, care, leadership, specialist expertise, or adapting to messy real-world situations. AI and machines may still change parts of the work, but the occupation is likely to remain a distinct human role.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Human strengths important in this job

These are human abilities and work contexts that are important in this occupation. They may help explain why parts of the role are harder to replace end-to-end, but they are not the only inputs into the automation score.

Assisting and caring for others

Very important
Why this matters
Provide hands-on help, emotional support, or personal care to people—work that depends on empathy, trust, and responding to individual needs in the moment.
Jobs that also use this strength

Decision-making and problem solving

Very important
Why this matters
Analyze information, weigh tradeoffs, and choose the best solution—especially when situations are ambiguous, high-stakes, or have real-world consequences.
Jobs that also use this strength

Psychology knowledge

Very important
Why this matters
Understanding human behavior, motivation, and individual differences to assess needs, respond appropriately, and support behavior change or mental health.
Jobs that also use this strength

Active learning

Very important
Why this matters
Keeps learning from new information and applying it to make better decisions now and in the future, especially when situations change.
Jobs that also use this strength

Education and training expertise

Very important
Why this matters
Designing and delivering instruction—adapting lessons to different learners and measuring whether training actually works.
Jobs that also use this strength
Show 5 more strengths

Working directly with the public

Quite important
Why this matters
The job involves face-to-face interaction with customers, clients, or guests—answering questions, handling requests, and managing service situations in real time. Roles with frequent public interaction are harder to replace end-to-end because they rely on trust, communication, and adapting to unpredictable human needs.
Jobs that also use this strength

Thinking creatively

Quite important
Why this matters
Coming up with original ideas and designs—creating new concepts, products, systems, or artistic work. This kind of open-ended invention and taste-based judgment is harder to automate end-to-end than routine, rule-based tasks.
Jobs that also use this strength

Persuasion

Quite important
Why this matters
Influencing people to change their minds or behavior through conversation, trust, and negotiation.
Jobs that also use this strength

Coordinating others’ work

Quite important
Why this matters
Bringing people together, assigning tasks, and keeping a group aligned so work gets done.
Jobs that also use this strength

Consulting and advising others

Quite important
Why this matters
Provide guidance and expert advice to managers or teams on technical, system, or process decisions—explaining options, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.
Jobs that also use this strength

What users think

Based on 151 votes

34% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 12% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Nurse Anesthetists will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

Based on user votes over time

View sentiment trend

How opinions have changed over time

Pay & outlook

Wages

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Nurse Anesthetists was $223,210 ($107 per hour).

The median annual wage for Nurse Anesthetists was 350.9% higher than the national median annual wage, which stood at $49,500.

View wage trend

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Growth

Very fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Nurse Anesthetists' job openings is expected to rise 8.6% by 2034

View employment trend

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Volume

Moderate range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 50,350 people employed as 'Nurse Anesthetists' within the United States.

This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 3 thousand people are employed as 'Nurse Anesthetists'.

People also viewed

Lawyers Computer Programmers Registered Nurses Actors Nurse Practitioners

What people are saying (8)

Leave a comment
Greg
09 May 2025 15:03
I see CRNA as a likely candidate not to be replaced completely in the near term, but for AI to dramatically reduce the expertise needed. The complexity of administering anesthesia and the ease of making a mistake is exactly why it will be ripe for AI. AI already excels at making sense of complex data and reducing human error. "Anesthesia is an art form" Okay, well look at the art AI is already producing. It has already shown a propensity for creative writing, music, and images, among others. Oftentimes it's indistinguishable from human creativity. What I doubt AI can do the most is actually the dexterity portion of the job.

Step 1: Develop the AI. The data inputs are already there - AI can already read a patient's charts, monitor their vitals, and transcribe feedback/instruction from the surgeon. If an AI can be developed that takes that information and selects which drugs to administer, that removes nearly all the brainpower and expertise needed from a CRNA.
Step 2: Train someone to intubate and the other physical labor parts of the job. Pay them 1/3 of what you pay a CRNA.
Step 3: An Anesthesiologist monitors multiple rooms simultaneously (like they already do with CRNAs) as a failsafe against errors by the AI and is present during critical periods like induction and emergence, intervening if there's an emergency.
GasMan
28 Jan 2026 00:58
Painfully obvious this person does not know anything about anesthesia
L. (Highly likely)
21 Mar 2025 21:29
With the right machine they could administer anesthesia and monitor a patient simultaneously. Especially with the growth of engineering jobs in designing new technology for the medical field.
Andre (No chance)
16 Jan 2025 00:25
Anesthesia is one of the most complicated areas in medicine and is incredibly dangerous when even the slightest mishap occurs. It requires creativity as not every scenario is cut and dry. It is well beyond just "putting someone to sleep". Anesthesiology involves critical communication, ethical decision making, risk management, manual labor, emergency management, situational awareness, and knowing what to do when inevitably one of the many many medical devices we use fails. I believe one day AI will be able to accomplish any job but the sheer complexity of anesthesiology is far beyond the capabilities that the average person may think a robot will be able to achieve in 20 years.
Lucas (Moderate)
27 Oct 2024 01:39
we alredy use robot for micro stiches so we most likely will do that soon.
Darrel Cooper CRNA (No chance)
25 May 2023 12:45
Every patient, and every case is different. No A.I. machine could handle all the nuances and multiple causative factors that determine the outcome of an anesthetic. Also, good anesthesia is part art and part experience and knowledge. A A.I. robot could never master this.
Carlos
20 Sep 2025 16:45
I think it’s worth being honest about how quickly technology is reshaping the job market. Large language models can process a patient’s full digital medical history, things like allergies, past surgeries, developmental milestones, and age and in seconds suggest which medications to administer and when to administer each one. That doesn’t mean the human role disappears, but it does mean many positions will become less skilled. It’s hard when we’ve invested years of training and taken on loans to build a career, and it’s natural to feel protective of that work.Still, it’s important to look at these changes realistically so we can adapt rather than be caught off guard.
Kathy (No chance)
18 May 2023 14:29
Manual dexterity, complex procedural skills, interpersonal skills, ability to comfort and reduce fear on part of the patient, rapid decision making based on knowledge, combined with intuition.

Leave a reply about this occupation
0/8000

Job description

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.

O*NET-SOC code: 29-1151.00