Instruct patients in the use of assistive equipment
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Training and Teaching Others (4.A.4.b.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Dispense medical devices or drugs, and calculate dosages and provide instructions as necessary.
- Offer health promotion or prevention activities, such as training people to use blood pressure devices or diabetes monitors.
- Teach cane skills, including cane use with a guide, diagonal techniques, and two-point touches.
- Assist patients to insert or remove contact lenses.
- Instruct clients in how to wear and care for eyeglasses.
- Instruct patients in the use and care of orthoses and prostheses.
- Train clients to use hearing aids or other augmentative communication devices.
- Instruct patients in the care and use of contact lenses.
- Teach patients to use home health care equipment.
- Instruct patients in use of prosthetic or orthotic devices.
- Train clients to use adaptive equipment, such as large print, reading stands, lamps, writing implements, software, and electronic devices.
- Show customers how to insert, remove, and care for their contact lenses.
- Demonstrate assistive listening devices (ALDs) to clients.
- Train clients with visual impairments to use mobility devices or systems, such as human guides, dog guides, electronic travel aids (ETAs), and other adaptive mobility devices (AMDs).
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. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
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.
Enterprise platforms
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.
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
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Clinical Research Coordinators
- Hearing Aid Specialists
- Low Vision Therapists, Orientation and Mobility Specialists, and Vision Rehabilitation Therapists
- Medical Appliance Technicians
- Ophthalmic Medical Technicians
- Ophthalmic Medical Technologists
- Opticians, Dispensing
- Orthotists and Prosthetists
- Patient Representatives
- Pharmacists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Train others to use equipment or products”. 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.