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Service and sales workers · code 5329

Personal care workers in health services not elsewhere classified

This unit group covers providers of routine health and personal care support services not classified elsewhere in Minor Group 532: Personal Care Workers in Health Services. For instance, the group includes occupations such as dental aid, sterilization aid, hospital orderly, medical imaging assistant, and pharmacy aid. In such cases tasks would include - (a) cleaning and sterilizing surgical, dental and pharmaceutical instruments, bottles, beakers and other equipment; (b) labelling drugs, chemicals and other pharmaceutical preparations and replenishing stock on shelves; (c) lifting, turning and moving patients and transporting them in wheelchairs or on moveable beds; (d) preparing patients for examination or treatment; (e) setting up instrument trays, preparing materials, and assisting dentists or radiographers during procedures; (f) exposing diagnostic X-rays. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Dental aide - First aid attendant - Hospital orderly - Medical imaging assistant - Pharmacy aide - Phlebotomist - Sterilization aide Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Pharmaceutical assistant - 3213 - Dental technician - 3214 - Dental assistant - 3251

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 76 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • hospital porter
  • sterile services technician
  • phlebotomist

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

85
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 15 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 15 = 85

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

54.2
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 9 US jobs , so treat it as rough

37.8
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 41.2 · hand skill 38.3 · cramped spaces 33.9 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7 Hands-on, helping and caring for others

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

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

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 54.2 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

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 21.3, while the average is 15. 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. 21.3

    Labelling drugs, chemicals and other pharmaceutical preparations and replenishing stock on shelves

    Very Low
  2. 14.5

    Preparing patients for examination or treatment

    Very Low
  3. 14.5

    Exposing diagnostic X-rays.

    Very Low
  4. 14

    Lifting, turning and moving patients and transporting them in wheelchairs or on moveable beds

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Setting up instrument trays, preparing materials, and assisting dentists or radiographers during procedures

    Very Low
  6. 12.5

    Cleaning and sterilizing surgical, dental and pharmaceutical instruments, bottles, beakers and other equipment

    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.

6 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
58.8
AI does it for you
29.5

Helping wins by 29.3 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3112, 4232, 4233, 4518, 7114, 7119

Compared with similar jobs

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