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Professionals · code 2240

Paramedical practitioners

AI can file the death certificate. Suturing a wound is still skilled hands.

Reporting births, deaths and diseases is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. It barely touches six of the nine, including injections, stitches and routine procedures.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Paramedical practitioners provide advisory, diagnostic, curative and preventive medical services more limited in scope and complexity than those carried out by medical doctors. They work autonomously, or with limited supervision of medical doctors, and apply advanced clinical procedures for treating and preventing diseases, injuries and other physical or mental impairments common to specific communities. Tasks include - (a) conducting physical examinations of patients and interviewing them and their families to determine their health status, and recording patients’ medical information; (b) performing basic or more routine medical and surgical procedures, including prescribing and administering treatments, medications and other preventive or curative measures, especially for common diseases and disorders; (c) administering or ordering diagnostic tests, such as X-ray, electrocardiogram and laboratory tests; (d) performing therapeutic procedures such as injections, immunizations, suturing and wound care, and infection management; (e) assisting medical doctors with complex surgical procedures; (f) monitoring patients’ progress and response to treatment, and identifying signs and symptoms requiring referral to medical doctors; (g) advising patients and families on diet, exercise and other habits which aid prevention or treatment of disease and disorders; (h) identifying and referring complex or unusual cases to medical doctors, hospitals or other places for specialized care; (i) reporting births, deaths and notifiable diseases to government authorities to meet legal and professional reporting requirements. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Advanced care paramedic - Clinical officer (paramedical) - Feldscher - Primary care paramedic - Surgical technician Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - General practitioner - 2211 - Surgeon - 2212 - Medical assistant - 3256 - Emergency paramedic - 3258 Note Occupations included in this unit group normally require completion of tertiary-level training in theoretical and practical medical services. Workers providing services limited to emergency treatment and ambulance practice are classified in Unit Group 3258: Ambulance Workers.

77 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

181 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 9 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 23.3 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.3 = 76.7.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 44.8 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Paramedical practitioners 77

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Reporting to health authorities.
  • Health advice and education materials.
  • Decision support for referrals.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Examining and treating patients.
  • Procedures such as suturing and wound care.
  • Deciding when a patient needs a doctor.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • AI diagnostic support in clinics with few doctors.
  • Telemedicine links to specialists.
  • Disease surveillance systems.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

25 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 55 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

45 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 41 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

45 How
hands-on
41 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 44.7 · hand skill 40.2 · cramped spaces 39.4 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 51, against an average of 23. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 51

    Reporting births, deaths and notifiable diseases to government authorities to meet legal and professional reporting requirements.

    Medium
  2. 34

    Advising patients and families on diet, exercise and other habits which aid prevention or treatment of disease and disorders

    Low
  3. 28

    Identifying and referring complex or unusual cases to medical doctors, hospitals or other places for specialized care

    Low
  4. 25

    Monitoring patients' progress and response to treatment, and identifying signs and symptoms requiring referral to medical doctors

    Very Low
  5. 24

    Administering or ordering diagnostic tests, such as x-ray, electrocardiogram, and laboratory tests

    Very Low
  6. 17

    Conducting physical examinations of patients and interviewing them and their families to determine their health status, and recording patients' medical information

    Very Low
  7. 15

    Assisting medical doctors with complex surgical procedures

    Very Low
  8. 10

    Performing therapeutic procedures, such as injections, immunizations, suturing and wound care, and infection management

    Very Low
  9. 9

    Performing basic or more routine medical and surgical procedures, including prescribing and administering treatments, medications and other preventive or curative measures, especially for common diseases and disorders

    Very Low

9 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
55
AI does it for you
25

Sidekick wins, by 30 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 4111

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.03% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

49
51

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should clinical officers and paramedical practitioners be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

The reporting is moving. Reporting births, deaths and notifiable diseases is rated Medium, and advising and referring patients are Low; examining and treating patients rate Very Low. AI can take on reporting and support decisions; the care stays human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →