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Service and sales workers · code 5321

Health care assistants

Health care assistants provide direct personal care and assistance with activities of daily living to patients and residents in a variety of health care settings such as hospitals, clinics and residential nursing care facilities. They generally work in implementation of established care plans and practices, and under the direct supervision of medical, nursing or other health professionals or associate professionals. Tasks include - (a) providing care, support and treatment to patients and residents of medical, rehabilitative and residential care facilities according to treatment plans established by medical, nursing and other health professionals; (b) assisting patients with personal and therapeutic care needs such as personal hygiene, feeding, dressing, physical mobility and exercise, communication, taking oral medications and changing dressings; (c) positioning, lifting and turning patients and transporting them in wheelchairs or on movable beds; (d) maintaining patients’ environmental hygiene standards, such as cleaning patient rooms and changing bed linen; (e) providing massage and other non-pharmacological pain relief measures, such as during pregnancy and labour; (f) observing patients’ condition, responses and behaviour and reporting changes to a health professional. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Birth assistant (clinic or hospital) - Nursing aide (clinic or hospital) - Patient care assistant - Psychiatric aid Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Nurse (professional) - 2221 - Nurse (associate professional) - 3221 - Ambulance worker - 3258 - Nursing aide (home) - 5322 Notes Workers who provide personal care to residents of institutions and facilities that have permanent medical or nursing supervision (such as hospitals, rehabilitation centres, residential nursing care facilities and nursing homes), and therefore work under the direct supervision of nurses, medical doctors, or other health professionals or associate professionals, are classified in Unit Group 5321: Health Care Assistants. Workers who provide personal care to residents of independent living units, generally without permanent medical or nursing supervision, should be classified in Unit Group 5322: Home-based Personal Care Workers. In general, workers classified in Minor Group 532: Personal Care Workers in Health Services do not perform tasks requiring extensive medical knowledge or training, such as administering medications and cleaning and dressing wounds: where tasks of this type are performed they are of a simple and routine nature.

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 62 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • healthcare assistant

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

85.9
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 14.1 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 14.1 = 85.9

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

46.1
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

35.9
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 37.5 · hand skill 34.8 · cramped spaces 35.4 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

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.

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 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 46.1 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.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 24, while the average is 14.1. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 24

    Observing patients’ condition, responses and behaviour and reporting changes to a health professional.

    Very Low
  2. 17.3

    Providing care, support and treatment to patients and residents of medical, rehabilitative and residential care facilities according to treatment plans established by medical, nursing and other health professionals

    Very Low
  3. 12

    Assisting patients with personal and therapeutic care needs such as personal hygiene, feeding, dressing, physical mobility and exercise, communication, taking oral medications and changing dressings

    Very Low
  4. 11.5

    Providing massage and other non-pharmacological pain relief measures, such as during pregnancy and labour

    Very Low
  5. 10.3

    Maintaining patients' environmental hygiene standards, such as cleaning patient rooms and changing bed linen

    Very Low
  6. 9.5

    Positioning, lifting and turning patients and transporting them in wheelchairs or on movable beds

    Very Low

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

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
60
AI does it for you
26

Helping wins by 34 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 4233

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.1. This one is above that.