An physician-founded and run non-profit organization named the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF), has undertaken the important task of addressing issues pertinent to reducing anesthesia errors. As I have written elsewhere on this web site, the anesthesia profession has made ground-breaking strides to improve patient safety. Nevertheless, the job of improving anesthesia safety must be ongoing because anesthesia errors when they occur are often catastrophic. If a patient is receiving inadequate oxygen, death or brain damage can occur in minutes. Use of the wrong kind of anesthesia can be fatal. Other of the most common anesthesia errors can also cause death or permanent disability. The APSF has written about an additional source of potentially tragic anesthesia errors - fatigue of the anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist. There is currently a shortage anesthesiology professionals in the United States. As a result, anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists may be over-scheduled. Hospital administrators and chairs of departments of surgery and anesthesiology must carefully analyze the scheduling within their hospitals to make sure that busy schedules do not result in a patient tragedy. In the anesthesia profession, no less than in the airline or trucking industry, fatigue can be disastrous.