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Embalmers

Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.

Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

Realistic

Second Interest High-Point

Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

Conventional

Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

Investigative

Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.

Enterprising

Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.

Social

Third Interest High-Point

Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.

Artistic

First Interest High-Point

Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed

Personal Care and Service Occupations

Funeral Service Workers

Conform to laws of health and sanitation and ensure that legal requirements concerning embalming are met.

Apply cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance to the deceased.

Close incisions, using needles and sutures.

Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.

Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.

Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.

Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.

Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home.

Perform the duties of funeral directors, including coordinating funeral activities.

Attach trocar to pump-tube, start pump, and repeat probing to force embalming fluid into organs.

Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.

Pack body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent escape of gases or waste matter.

Conduct interviews to arrange for the preparation of obituary notices, to assist with the selection of caskets or urns, and to determine the location and time of burials or cremations.

Insert convex celluloid or cotton between eyeballs and eyelids to prevent slipping and sinking of eyelids.

Assist with placing caskets in hearses and organize cemetery processions.

Maintain records, such as itemized lists of clothing or valuables delivered with body and names of persons embalmed.

Wash and dry bodies, using germicidal soap and towels or hot air dryers.

Arrange for transporting the deceased to another state for interment.

Perform special procedures necessary for remains that are to be transported to other states or overseas, or where death was caused by infectious disease.

Supervise funeral attendants and other funeral home staff.

Serve as pallbearers, attend visiting rooms, and provide other assistance to the bereaved.

Direct casket and floral display placement and arrange guest seating.

Arrange funeral home equipment and perform general maintenance.

Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.

Assist coroners at death scenes or at autopsies, file police reports, and testify at inquests or in court, if employed by a coroner.

Adult trocars

Air brushes

Aneurysm needles

Angular forceps

Arm and hand positioners

Axillary drain tubes

Barber scissors

Bistoury knives

Blending brushes

Body bags

Body positioners

Calvarium clamps

Carotid tubes

Casket lifters

Centrifugal force pumps

Cosmetic brushes

Curved arterial tubes

Curved Kelly forceps

Curved suture needles

Embalmers

Overview

Career

What Embalmers Do

Other Job Titles Embalmers May Have

Tasks & Responsibilities May Include

Embalmers

Overview

Career

What Embalmers Do

Other Job Titles Embalmers May Have

Tasks & Responsibilities May Include

Education

Level of Education Attained by Embalmers

Majors Related to Career

Related Careers

Related Leaders