Description
Prepare human remains for interment or cremation in compliance with legal, health, and sanitation requirements.
- • Comply with health and sanitation laws and ensure all legal embalming requirements are met.
- • Apply cosmetics to impart a lifelike appearance to the deceased.
- • Incise abdominal walls and use a trocar to aspirate organs and withdraw fluids and waste matter.
- • Close incisions with needles and sutures.
- • Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.
- • Make vascular incisions and drain blood from the circulatory system, replacing it with embalming fluid using a pump.
- • Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
- • Coordinate with funeral directors and assist with funeral activities as needed.
- • Join lips using needles and thread or wire.
- • Assist in arrangement conferences for obituary preparation, merchandise selection, and scheduling of burials or cremations when assigned.
- • Attach a trocar to the pump tube, start the pump, and probe to distribute embalming fluid into organs and cavities.
- • Perform special procedures for remains requiring interstate or international transport or involving infectious disease, per regulations.
- • Maintain records, including itemized lists of clothing or valuables received and identification of persons embalmed.
- • Insert convex eye caps or cotton to support eyelids and prevent slipping or sinking.
- • Wash and dry bodies using germicidal soap and towels or hot-air dryers.
- • Prepare and arrange remains for shipment to another state or country for interment.
- • Supervise preparation-room assistants and other funeral home staff as assigned.
- • Pack body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent the escape of gases or waste matter.
- • Assist with placing caskets in hearses and organizing cemetery processions.
- • Serve as a pallbearer, attend visiting rooms, and provide support to the bereaved.
- • Direct casket and floral display placement and arrange guest seating.
- • Arrange funeral home equipment and perform general maintenance.
- • Assist coroners at death scenes or autopsies and complete related reports or testimony if employed by a coroner.
- • Press the diaphragm to evacuate air from the lungs.
- • Remove the deceased from the place of death and transport to the funeral home.
- • Clean and disinfect preparation and embalming areas.
Related specializations
Interview options
Interview options
Interviewee gender
Interviewee accent
Interview time
Related Pathways
Healthcare & Human Services
View
Source
Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
Learn more
Sources & Standards:
This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
