Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1125.00
Recreational Therapists
Plan, direct, or coordinate medically-approved recreation programs for patients in hospitals, nursing homes, or other institutions. Activities include sports, trips, dramatics, social activities, and crafts. May assess a patient condition and recommend appropriate recreational activity.
- US jobs
- 14,930
- Median wage
- $61,960 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of recreational therapists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Instruct patient in activities and techniques, such as sports, dance, music, art, or relaxation techniques, designed to meet their specific physical or psychological needs.
- Conduct therapy sessions to improve patients' mental and physical well-being.
- Plan, organize, direct, and participate in treatment programs and activities to facilitate patients' rehabilitation, help them integrate into the community, and prevent further medical problems.
- Observe, analyze, and record patients' participation, reactions, and progress during treatment sessions, modifying treatment programs as needed.
- Develop treatment plan to meet needs of patient, based on needs assessment, patient interests, and objectives of therapy.
- Obtain information from medical records, medical staff, family members and the patients, themselves, to assess patients' capabilities, needs and interests.
- Confer with members of treatment team to plan and evaluate therapy programs.
- Counsel and encourage patients to develop leisure activities.
- Encourage clients with special needs and circumstances to acquire new skills and get involved in health-promoting leisure activities, such as sports, games, arts and crafts, and gardening.
- Prepare and submit reports and charts to treatment team to reflect patients' reactions and evidence of progress or regression.
- Develop discharge plans for patients.
Other job titles for this occupation (25)
Activities Coordinator · Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS) · General Activities Therapist · Recreation Therapist · Recreational Therapist · Recreational Therapy Program Coordinator · Rehabilitation Therapist · Therapeutic Recreation Specialist · Therapeutic Specialist · Therapist · Activities Therapist · Activity Therapist · Adventure Therapist · Certified Recreational Therapist · Creative Arts Therapist · Dance Therapist · Drama Therapist · Ecotherapist · Horticultural Therapist · Life Enrichment Coordinator (LEC) · Lifestyle Director · Music Rehabilitation Therapist · Recreational Therapy Technician · Therapeutic Mentor · Therapeutic Riding Instructor