Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1211.00
Anesthesiologists
Administer anesthetics and analgesics for pain management prior to, during, or after surgery.
- US jobs
- 38,760
- Median wage
- $391,490 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of anesthesiologists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Examine patient, obtain medical history, and use diagnostic tests to determine risk during surgical, obstetrical, and other medical procedures.
- Administer anesthetic or sedation during medical procedures, using local, intravenous, spinal, or caudal methods.
- Record type and amount of anesthesia and patient condition throughout procedure.
- Monitor patient before, during, and after anesthesia and counteract adverse reactions or complications.
- Decide when patients have recovered or stabilized enough to be sent to another room or ward or to be sent home following outpatient surgery.
- Coordinate administration of anesthetics with surgeons during operation.
- Position patient on operating table to maximize patient comfort and surgical accessibility.
- Coordinate and direct work of nurses, medical technicians, and other health care providers.
- Provide and maintain life support and airway management and help prepare patients for emergency surgery.
- Confer with other medical professionals to determine type and method of anesthetic or sedation to render patient insensible to pain.
- Manage anesthesiological services, coordinating them with other medical activities and formulating plans and procedures.
- Place invasive intravascular monitors into patients.
Other job titles for this occupation (18)
Anesthesiologist MD (Anesthesiologist Medical Doctor) · Anesthesiology Resident · Attending Anesthesiologist · Cardiothoracic Anesthesiologist · Critical Care Anesthesiologist · Medical Doctor (MD) · Obstetrical Anesthesiologist · Pediatric Anesthesiologist · Physician · Physician Anesthesiologist · Ambulatory Anesthesiologist · Anesthesiology Pain Management Physician · Anesthesiology Physician · Anesthetist · Cardiac Anesthesiologist · DO Physician (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine Physician) · Doctor · General Anesthesiologist