Administer non-intravenous medications
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The documentation around care is highly automatable and that is where the time goes back. The care itself needs physical presence and someone accountable for the outcome, so this work stays where it is.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Direct care and assistance |
| Jobs that do it | 14 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents |
| O*NET activity | Assisting and Caring for Others (4.A.4.a.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 14 occupations that perform it.
- Administer medications to patients and monitor patients for reactions or side effects.
- Administer medications intravenously, by injection, orally, through gastric tubes, or by other methods.
- Prescribe or administer medication, therapy, and other specialized medical care to treat or prevent illness, disease, or injury.
- Prescribe or administer medications, such as anti-epileptic drugs, and monitor patients for behavioral and cognitive side effects.
- Prescribe or administer therapy, medication, and other specialized medical care to treat or prevent illness, disease, or injury.
- Prescribe or administer treatment, therapy, medication, vaccination, and other specialized medical care to treat or prevent illness, disease, or injury in infants and children.
- Prescribe or administer antibiotics, antiseptics, or compresses to treat infection or injury.
- Prescribe or administer topical or systemic medications to treat ophthalmic conditions and to manage pain.
- Administer, dispense, or prescribe natural medicines, such as food or botanical extracts, herbs, dietary supplements, vitamins, nutraceuticals, and amino acids.
- Administer drugs, orally or by injection, or perform intravenous procedures.
- Administer oral medications or hypodermic injections, following physician's prescriptions and hospital procedures.
- Prepare and administer medications, vaccines, serums, or treatments, as prescribed by veterinarians.
- Administer topical ophthalmic or oral medications.
- Perform emergency pharmacological interventions.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing for the care itself. The time comes back from the documentation around it, so the stack worth building is the recording one, on the pages for that work.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
Who does this work
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Critical Care Nurses
- General Internal Medicine Physicians
- Naturopathic Physicians
- Neurologists
- Obstetricians and Gynecologists
- Ophthalmic Medical Technicians
- Ophthalmic Medical Technologists
- Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric
- Paramedics
- Pediatricians, General
- Psychiatric Technicians
- Registered Nurses
- Urologists
- Veterinary Technologists and Technicians
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Administer basic health care or medical treatments”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.