Treat acute illnesses, infections, or injuries
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 | 15 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 15 occupations that perform it.
- Treat infections of the oral cavity, salivary glands, jaws, and neck.
- Restore function and aesthetics to traumatic injury survivors, or to individuals with diseases or congenital disabilities.
- Remove foreign bodies from the eye.
- Treat sick or injured animals by prescribing medication, setting bones, dressing wounds, or performing surgery.
- Provide health care, first aid, immunizations, or assistance in convalescence or rehabilitation in locations such as schools, hospitals, or industry.
- Treat wounds or superficial lacerations.
- Provide specialized direct and indirect care to inpatients and outpatients within a designated specialty, such as obstetrics, neurology, oncology, or neonatal care.
- Diagnose or treat acute health care problems, such as illnesses, infections, or injuries.
- Manage and treat common health problems, such as infections, influenza or pneumonia, as well as serious, chronic, and complex illnesses, in adolescents, adults, and the elderly.
- Treat children who have minor illnesses, acute and chronic health problems, and growth and development concerns.
- Diagnose or treat performance-related conditions, such as sports injuries or repetitive-motion injuries.
- Examine, evaluate and treat athletes who have been injured or who have medical problems such as exercise-induced asthma.
- Treat minor cuts, abrasions, or contusions.
- Perform advanced ophthalmic procedures, including electrophysiological, electrophysical, or microbial procedures.
- Prepare and apply sterile wound dressings.
- Treat problems affecting the oral mucosa, such as mouth ulcers and infections.
- Treat or refer patients for primary care conditions, such as headaches, hypertension, urinary tract infections, upper respiratory infections, and dermatological conditions.
- Perform primary care procedures such as suturing, splinting, administering immunizations, taking cultures, and debriding wounds.
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
15 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Acute Care Nurses
- Clinical Nurse Specialists
- General Internal Medicine Physicians
- Naturopathic Physicians
- Nurse Practitioners
- Ophthalmic Medical Technologists
- Optometrists
- Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
- Pediatricians, General
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians
- Prosthodontists
- Registered Nurses
- Sports Medicine Physicians
- Surgical Assistants
- Veterinarians
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Treat injuries, illnesses, or diseases”. 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.