The anesthesia job market of the next decade will look nothing like the one that came before it, according to Jeff Tieder, MSN, CRNA, clinical assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Mr. Tieder advises students on this regularly, and he predicts the field is heading for significant disruption on both the supply and demand side. He also notes that AI is coming, and only the most adaptable providers will be well-positioned for it.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited lightly for clarity and length.
Question: If you were advising someone entering the anesthesia field today, what would you tell them about what the job is going to look like in five to ten years?
Jeff Tieder: I do this on a regular basis as full-time faculty. The biggest thing I would say — if I knock it down to one word — is disruption.
We’ve got two sides of the supply-demand curve that are really going to fluctuate, and we’re just going to have to see how this rolls out. On one side, we have a huge physician shortage. On the same side, we have a huge increase in demand for anesthesia services — inside and outside the operating room, non-operating room settings, ASCs popping up everywhere. Huge and growing demand.
Then on the supply side, they’re trying to get more physician residency programs going, but those are challenging and not always filling up. At the same time, there’s just a real explosion in the number of CRNA programs that have developed or are developing in the last several years. Here in Tennessee, we had four or five programs in the entire state. I think there should be nine by the end of this year.
So when I talk to students and they ask about job prospects, I tell them: they will be fine — as long as they are good. If you are a high-quality, competent, diverse-skill-set anesthesia provider, you will not have a problem finding a job. If you are middle of the road — you can only do the cases you can do, you’re not adaptable, you don’t have the ability to do regional anesthesia, you can’t think outside the box and look at opioid-sparing or opioid-free techniques — you might struggle.
And I hate to throw in the AI buzzword, but we know that’s going to have an impact on fields like radiology, and I can see a situation where it impacts ASCs and hospitals as well. An AI program that can go through an electronic medical record much faster than any physician or CRNA, completing risk stratification in a fraction of a second — I know it’s still in its infancy in healthcare, and we’ve seen plenty of problems already. But the cat’s out of the bag. The more competent providers are, with diverse skill sets and an understanding of what drives the healthcare system — throughput, volume, getting patients in, cared for, and home as quickly and as safely as possible — those are the providers, and the facilities, that are going to thrive.