Prepare patients physically for medical procedures
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 | 11 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 11 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare patients for and assist with examinations or treatments.
- Provide and maintain life support and airway management and help prepare patients for emergency surgery.
- Attach electrodes to the patients' chests, arms, and legs, connect electrodes to leads from the electrocardiogram (EKG) machine, and operate the EKG machine to obtain a reading.
- Prepare patient for exam by explaining procedure, transferring patient to ultrasound table, scrubbing skin and applying gel, and positioning patient properly.
- Attach physiological monitoring leads to patient's finger, chest, waist, or other body parts.
- Prepare animals for surgery, performing such tasks as shaving surgical areas.
- Prepare patients for examinations, tests, or treatments and explain procedures.
- Attach electrodes to patients, using adhesives.
- Remove patient hair or disinfect incision sites to prepare patient for surgery.
- Show patients to examination rooms and prepare them for the physician.
- Remove jewelry, watches, or other personal items from the deceased prior to cremation.
- Place and secure small, portable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners on body part to be imaged, such as arm, leg, or head.
- Measure patients' body parts and mark locations where electrodes are to be placed.
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
11 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Anesthesiologists
- Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians
- Crematory Operators
- Diagnostic Medical Sonographers
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists
- Medical Assistants
- Neurodiagnostic Technologists
- Registered Nurses
- Surgical Assistants
- 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.