When working with async/await in Node.js, handling errors properly is essential for reliable applications. In asynchronous functions, any error thrown inside the function or any rejected promise will be caught by the nearest try/catch block. If you do not use a try/catch block, unhandled exceptions can cause your application to crash or result in unhandled promise rejections.

A best practice is to wrap the code that might fail inside a try block and handle any exceptions in the corresponding catch block. This allows you to log errors, return fallback values, or rethrow the error for higher-level handling. Always remember that await expressions will throw if the underlying promise rejects, so every await that could fail should be considered for error handling.

Another important consideration is propagating errors correctly. If you catch an error but do not handle it appropriately, you can rethrow it using throw error; so that the caller of your async function can handle it further up the call stack. This is especially useful in larger applications with multiple layers of async functions.

Consistently using try/catch with async/await helps you maintain clear, predictable error handling and makes your asynchronous code safer and easier to debug.