Description
Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.
- • 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.
- • Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
- • Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
- • Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax.
- • Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.
- • Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
- • Perform the duties of funeral directors, including coordinating funeral activities.
- • Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.
- • 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.
- • Attach trocar to pump-tube, start pump, and repeat probing to force embalming fluid into organs.
- • Perform special procedures necessary for remains that are to be transported to other states or overseas, or where death was caused by infectious disease.
- • Maintain records, such as itemized lists of clothing or valuables delivered with body and names of persons embalmed.
- • Insert convex celluloid or cotton between eyeballs and eyelids to prevent slipping and sinking of eyelids.
- • Wash and dry bodies, using germicidal soap and towels or hot air dryers.
- • Arrange for transporting the deceased to another state for interment.
- • Supervise funeral attendants and other funeral home staff.
- • Pack body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent escape of gases or waste matter.
- • Assist with placing caskets in hearses and organize cemetery processions.
- • 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.
- • Assist coroners at death scenes or at autopsies, file police reports, and testify at inquests or in court, if employed by a coroner.
- • Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.
- • Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home.
- • Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.
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Healthcare & Human Services
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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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
