AI exposure: 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.
Reading this score
computedAt 10.9% of weighted task load, Psychiatric Aides sits at the 16th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 74.5% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is presence. Across this occupation's 17 tasks it averages 2.30 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, a person has to be the one present. This is the friction software does not erode. Where the point of the act is that a human is there, to care or to witness or to take responsibility in the room, automating the output misses what was being paid for.
The most exposed thing this job does is Record and maintain patient information, at 49.6%. The least is Participate in recreational activities with patients, at 0.0%. A gap of 49.6% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare support occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 12.0% across the group's 19 roles, with 11 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 17 tasks, 2 are currently banded exposed, 3 assisted and 12 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.05 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.12 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.30 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.86 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.70 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.89 | 0-3 |
Task by task
17 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record and maintain patient information, such as vital signs, eating habits, behavior, progress notes, treatments, or discharge plans. | 49.6% | 37.9% | 12.5% | 4.33 | exposed |
| Complete administrative tasks, such as entering orders into computer, answering telephone calls, or maintaining medical or facility information. | 49.6% | 37.9% | 12.5% | 4.08 | exposed |
| Interview patients upon admission and record information. | 29.2% | 33.3% | 37.5% | 4.01 | assisted |
| Maintain patients' restrictions to assigned areas. | 27.1% | 35.4% | 37.5% | 4.29 | assisted |
| Work as part of a team that may include psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, or social workers. | 16.7% | 33.3% | 50.0% | 4.35 | assisted |
| Listen and provide emotional support and encouragement to psychiatric patients. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.57 | untouched |
| Organize, supervise, or encourage patient participation in social, educational, or recreational activities. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Aid patients in becoming accustomed to hospital routines. | 5.0% | 7.5% | 87.5% | 4.20 | untouched |
| Complete physical checks and monitor patients to detect unusual or harmful behavior and report observations to professional staff. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.47 | untouched |
| Perform nursing duties, such as administering medications, measuring vital signs, collecting specimens, or drawing blood samples. | 1.5% | 6.9% | 91.7% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Provide patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities with routine physical, emotional, psychological, or rehabilitation care under the direction of nursing or medical staff. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.56 | untouched |
| Restrain or aid patients as necessary to prevent injury. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.44 | untouched |
| Provide patients with assistance in bathing, dressing, or grooming, demonstrating these skills as necessary. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Serve meals or feed patients needing assistance or persuasion. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Clean and disinfect rooms and furnishings to maintain a safe and orderly environment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.09 | untouched |
| Accompany patients to and from wards for medical or dental treatments, shopping trips, or religious or recreational events. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.77 | untouched |
| Participate in recreational activities with patients, including card games, sports, or television viewing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.70 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.