Seriously, we have more training than the nurse anesthetists do, and more responsibility. Consequently, we earn more than they do.

In most places, nurse anesthetists must work under the supervision of a physician. Sometimes that is the surgeon, which I’ve always found a little discomforting, because the surgeon knows less about anesthesia than the CRNA does. The anesthesiologist is responsible for the preoperative evaluation, and must be present for induction, emergence, and key portions of the case. We often put in the spinals, epidurals or nerve blocks when those are done.

What a nurse anesthetist can and cannot do is regulated by individual states’ regulations and individual hospitals’ regulations, as well as by that practitioner’s specific hospital privileges.

Both get paid a lot like over 150,000. But the doctor gets paid more because they’ve had more training