AI exposure: 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.
Reading this score
computedAt 10.7% of weighted task load, Nurse Anesthetists sits at the 15th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 74.2% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 24 tasks it averages 2.69 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Obtain informed consent from patients for anesthesia procedures, at 45.0%. The least is Disassemble and clean anesthesia equipment, at 0.0%. A gap of 45.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 78 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 24 tasks, 3 are currently banded exposed, 4 assisted and 17 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.03 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.84 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 1.88 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.60 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.80 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.69 | 0-3 |
Task by task
24 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obtain informed consent from patients for anesthesia procedures. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.65 | exposed |
| Discharge patients from post-anesthesia care. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.16 | exposed |
| Assess patients' medical histories to predict anesthesia response. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.67 | assisted |
| Develop anesthesia care plans. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.65 | assisted |
| Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in nursing. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.11 | exposed |
| Perform pre-anesthetic screenings, including physical evaluations and patient interviews, and document results. | 20.7% | 37.6% | 41.7% | 4.59 | assisted |
| Perform or evaluate the results of diagnostic tests, such as radiographs (x-rays) and electrocardiograms (EKGs). | 20.0% | 30.0% | 50.0% | 4.44 | assisted |
| Select and prescribe post-anesthesia medications or treatments to patients. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.50 | untouched |
| Evaluate patients' post-surgical or post-anesthesia responses, taking appropriate corrective actions or requesting consultation if complications occur. | 7.5% | 30.0% | 62.5% | 4.56 | untouched |
| Select, prepare, or use equipment, monitors, supplies, or drugs for the administration of anesthetics. | 6.3% | 10.4% | 83.3% | 4.70 | untouched |
| Instruct nurses, residents, interns, students, or other staff on topics such as anesthetic techniques, pain management and emergency responses. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 3.74 | untouched |
| Calibrate and test anesthesia equipment. | 4.2% | 8.3% | 87.5% | 4.58 | untouched |
| Monitor patients' responses, including skin color, pupil dilation, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, ventilation, or urine output, using invasive and noninvasive techniques. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.89 | untouched |
| Select, order, or administer pre-anesthetic medications. | 2.5% | 10.0% | 87.5% | 4.37 | untouched |
| Select, order, or administer anesthetics, adjuvant drugs, accessory drugs, fluids or blood products as necessary. | 1.3% | 7.0% | 91.7% | 4.80 | untouched |
| Manage patients' airway or pulmonary status, using techniques such as endotracheal intubation, mechanical ventilation, pharmacological support, respiratory therapy, and extubation. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.96 | untouched |
| Respond to emergency situations by providing airway management, administering emergency fluids or drugs, or using basic or advanced cardiac life support techniques. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.92 | untouched |
| Perform or manage regional anesthetic techniques, such as local, spinal, epidural, caudal, nerve blocks and intravenous blocks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.67 | untouched |
| Prepare prescribed solutions and administer local, intravenous, spinal, or other anesthetics, following specified methods and procedures. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.59 | untouched |
| Administer post-anesthesia medications or fluids to support patients' cardiovascular systems. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.54 | untouched |
| Insert peripheral or central intravenous catheters. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.33 | untouched |
| Insert arterial catheters or perform arterial punctures to obtain arterial blood samples. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Request anesthesia equipment repairs, adjustments, or safety tests. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.04 | untouched |
| Disassemble and clean anesthesia equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.65 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.