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Embalmers

Prepare bodies for interment in conformity with legal requirements.

What you’d do

  • 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.
  • Join lips, using needles and thread or wire.
  • Close incisions, using needles and sutures.
  • Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs.
  • Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed.
  • Dress bodies and place them in caskets.
  • Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump.

Skills that matter

  • Speaking
  • Active Listening
  • Critical Thinking
  • Service Orientation
  • Social Perceptiveness
  • Time Management

How to get there

Medium preparation: usually vocational school, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree

Also called

  • Embalmer
  • Licensed Embalmer
  • Trade Embalmer
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