Position patients for treatment or examination
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 | 13 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 13 occupations that perform it.
- Position patients for treatment with accuracy, according to prescription.
- Position patient on operating table to maximize patient comfort and surgical accessibility.
- Prepare and position patients for testing.
- Select appropriate equipment settings and adjust patient positions to obtain the best sites and angles.
- Position radiation fields, radiation beams, and patient to allow for most effective treatment of patient's disease, using computer.
- Position patient on examining table and set up and adjust equipment to obtain optimum view of specific body area as requested by physician.
- Position patients on cradle, attaching immobilization devices, if needed, to ensure appropriate placement for imaging.
- Immobilize patient for placement on stretcher and ambulance transport, using backboard or other spinal immobilization device.
- Restrain violent, potentially violent, or suicidal patients by verbal or physical means as required.
- Prepare patients for surgery, including positioning patients on the operating table and covering them with sterile surgical drapes to prevent exposure.
- Restrain animals during exams or procedures.
- Coordinate or participate in the positioning of patients, using body stabilizing equipment or protective padding to provide appropriate exposure for the procedure or to protect against nerve damage or circulation impairment.
- Assist maternal patients to find physical positions that will facilitate childbirth.
- Prepare patient for exam by explaining procedure, transferring patient to ultrasound table, scrubbing skin and applying gel, and positioning patient properly.
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
13 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Anesthesiologists
- Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians
- Diagnostic Medical Sonographers
- Emergency Medical Technicians
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists
- Midwives
- Nuclear Medicine Technologists
- Psychiatric Technicians
- Radiation Therapists
- Radiologic Technologists and Technicians
- Surgical Assistants
- Surgical Technologists
- Veterinary Technologists and Technicians
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Assist healthcare practitioners during medical procedures”. 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.