Job Check
Psychiatric Aides
Assist mentally impaired or emotionally disturbed patients, working under direction of nursing and medical staff. May assist with daily living activities, lead patients in educational and recreational activities, or accompany patients to and from examinations and treatments. May restrain violent patients. Includes psychiatric orderlies.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Listen and provide emotional support and encouragement to psychiatric patients.Mostly human for now
- 02Provide patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities with routine physical, emotional, psychological, or rehabilitation care under the direction of nursing or medical staff.Mostly human for now
- 03Complete physical checks and monitor patients to detect unusual or harmful behavior and report observations to professional staff.Mostly human for now
- 04Restrain or aid patients as necessary to prevent injury.Mostly human for now
- 05Work as part of a team that may include psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, or social workers.Mostly human for now
- 06Record and maintain patient information, such as vital signs, eating habits, behavior, progress notes, treatments, or discharge plans.AI could speed this up a lot
- 07Maintain patients' restrictions to assigned areas.Mostly human for now
- 08Organize, supervise, or encourage patient participation in social, educational, or recreational activities.Mostly human for now
- 09Provide patients with assistance in bathing, dressing, or grooming, demonstrating these skills as necessary.Mostly human for now
- 10Aid patients in becoming accustomed to hospital routines.Mostly human for now
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
13%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 17% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 43% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Listen and provide emotional support and encouragement to psychiatric patients.
- Provide patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities with routine physical, emotional, psychological, or rehabilitation care under the direction of nursing or medical staff.
- Complete physical checks and monitor patients to detect unusual or harmful behavior and report observations to professional staff.