Embalm corpses
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 4 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Handling and Moving Objects (4.A.3.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 4 occupations that perform it.
- Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
- Embalm, dress, or otherwise prepare the deceased for viewing.
- Embalm, dress, cosmeticize, and casket the deceased.
- Perform embalming duties, as necessary.
- Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
- Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.
- Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.
- Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.
- Attach trocar to pump-tube, start pump, and repeat probing to force embalming fluid into organs.
- Perform special procedures necessary for remains that are to be transported to other states or overseas, or where death was caused by infectious disease.
- Insert convex celluloid or cotton between eyeballs and eyelids to prevent slipping and sinking of eyelids.
- Pack body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent escape of gases or waste matter.
- Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.
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.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
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.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
4 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
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.