Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1071.01
Anesthesiologist Assistants
Assist anesthesiologists in the administration of anesthesia for surgical and non-surgical procedures. Monitor patient status and provide patient care during surgical treatment.
- US jobs
- 162,150 (SOC 29-1071 group, "Physician Assistants")
- Median wage
- $135,880 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of anesthesiologist assistants?
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.
- Provide airway management interventions including tracheal intubation, fiber optics, or ventilary support.
- Assist anesthesiologists in monitoring of patients, including electrocardiogram (EKG), direct arterial pressure, central venous pressure, arterial blood gas, hematocrit, or routine measurement of temperature, respiration, blood pressure or heart rate.
- Control anesthesia levels during procedures.
- Administer anesthetic, adjuvant, or accessory drugs under the direction of an anesthesiologist.
- Pretest and calibrate anesthesia delivery systems and monitors.
- Respond to emergency situations by providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), or pediatric advanced life support (PALS).
- Collect and document patients' pre-anesthetic health histories.
- Administer blood, blood products, or supportive fluids.
- Verify availability of operating room supplies, medications, and gases.
- Assist anesthesiologists in performing anesthetic procedures, such as epidural or spinal injections.
- Assist in the provision of advanced life support techniques including those procedures using high frequency ventilation or intra-arterial cardiovascular assistance devices.
- Monitor and document patients' progress during post-anesthesia period.
Other job titles for this occupation (11)
Anesthesia Assistant · Anesthesia Orderly · Anesthesia Technician (Anesthesia Tech) · Anesthesiology Assistant · Anesthesiology Technician (Anesthesiology Tech) · CAA (Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant) · CAA (Certified Anesthesiology Assistant) · Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Technician (Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Tech) · Cer.AT (Certified Anesthesia Technician) · Cer.ATT (Certified Anesthesia Technologist) · Anesthesia Technologist