Anesthesiologists play an important role in the medical profession, as they control the amount of drugs used to render a patient unconscious prior to surgery, allowing doctors to work on and inside a patient without him feeling any pain. However, like all medical jobs revolving around the act of surgery, the anesthesiologist profession has many different risks associated with it.

Awake Patients

There have been recorded cases of patients being awake and aware of their surgery while doctors are operating on them, which is a terrifyingly painful event to even think about, much less experience. This occurs with certain patients who don't fully react to the drug that the anesthesiologist gives them and are able to stay conscious but unable to move, though not necessarily in pain, while doctors operate on them. This can lead to lawsuits for psychological trauma and is a rare side effect of some anesthesia in certain patients who are not susceptible to it. According to anesthesiarisk.net, this only occurs in about 0.1 to 0.2 percent of patients who are ever operated on.

Too Much Anesthesia

Sometimes, though licensed anesthesiologists should never allow this to happen, patients are given too much anesthesia or their bodies have allergic reactions to it and they die. When this tragic event occurs, the victim's family will usually sue the doctor, anesthesiologist and the hospital. This will most likely cost the anesthesiologist her job and may even result in a criminal investigation if the circumstances warrant this. It could also cause the anesthesiologist an ample amount of guilt that a patient died because of a mistake she made. This is a risk that everyone involved in the field of surgery runs.

Radiation Risk

According to Anesthesiology News, there are more and more treatments that involve radiation through chemicals and treatments during surgery, which exposes anesthesiologists to some of the most radiation of anyone in the medical profession, especially through the eyes. However, this is said to be the case primarily because anesthesiologists are uninformed on how to protect themselves from radiation, whereas radiologists and nurses in the medical field who regularly are around radiation are trained on how to protect themselves from it. If an anesthesiologist is regularly on hand to administer anesthesia to patients during radiation treatments, then he should be educated on how to protect himself from exposure.