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Career Details : Embalmers

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Description

Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.

Experience

A minimum of two to four years of work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, an accountant must complete four years of college and work for several years in accounting to be considered qualified.

Education

Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.

Training

Employees in these occupations usually need several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational training.

Tasks

  • Packs body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent escape of gases or waste matter.
  • Applies cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance.
  • Reshapes or reconstructs disfigured or maimed bodies, using materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of paris, and wax.
  • Dresses and places body in casket.
  • Maintains records, such as itemized list of clothing or valuables delivered with body and names of persons embalmed.
  • Inserts convex celluloid or cotton between eyeball and eyelid to prevent slipping and sinking of eyelid.
  • Washes and dries body, using germicidal soap and towels or hot air drier.
  • Joins lips, using needle and thread or wire.
  • Presses diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.
  • Makes incision in arm or thigh and drains blood from circulatory system and replaces blood with embalming fluid, using pump.
  • Incises stomach and abdominal walls and probes internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
  • Attaches trocar to pump tube, starts pump, and repeats probing to force embalming fluid into organs.
  • Closes incisions, using needle and suture.

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    Important Abilities

    General Work Activities

    Important Skills

    Frequent Work Context

    • Provide a Service to Others
    • Indoors
    • Contaminants
    • Using Hands on Objects, Tools, Controls
    • Importance of Being Sure All Is Done

    Related Majors

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