Jobs / Healthcare / 31-9093.00
Medical Equipment Preparers
Prepare, sterilize, install, or clean laboratory or healthcare equipment. May perform routine laboratory tasks and operate or inspect equipment.
- US jobs
- 77,420
- Median wage
- $47,700 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of medical equipment preparers?
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.
- Examine equipment to detect leaks, worn or loose parts, or other indications of disrepair.
- Check sterile supplies to ensure that they are not outdated.
- Record sterilizer test results.
- Organize and assemble routine or specialty surgical instrument trays or other sterilized supplies, filling special requests as needed.
- Operate and maintain steam autoclaves, keeping records of loads completed, items in loads, and maintenance procedures performed.
- Clean instruments to prepare them for sterilization.
- Disinfect and sterilize equipment, such as respirators, hospital beds, or oxygen or dialysis equipment, using sterilizers, aerators, or washers.
- Purge wastes from equipment by connecting equipment to water sources and flushing water through systems.
- Maintain records of inventory or equipment usage and order medical instruments or supplies when inventory is low.
- Attend hospital in-service programs related to areas of work specialization.
- Report defective equipment to appropriate supervisors or staff.
- Start equipment and observe gauges and equipment operation to detect malfunctions and to ensure equipment is operating to prescribed standards.
Other job titles for this occupation (24)
Central Sterile Technician (Central Sterile Tech) · Central Supply Processing Department Technician (CSPDT) · Certified Registered Central Service Technician (CRCST) · CRCST (Certified Registered Central Supply Technician) · CSS Technician (Central Sterile Supply Technician) · CST (Central Service Technician) · Equipment Technician (Equipment Tech) · Sterile Preparation Technician (Sterile Preparation Tech) · Sterile Processing and Distribution Technician (SPD Tech) · Sterile Technician (Sterile Tech) · Aseptic Technician (Aseptic Tech) · Central Sterile Processing Technician (Central Sterile Processing Tech) · Central Sterilization Technician (Central Sterilization Tech) · Central Supply Technician (Central Supply Tech) · Oxygen Equipment Preparer · Reuse Technician · Sterile Processing Department Technician (SPD Technician) · Sterile Processing Technologist · Sterile Processor · Sterilization Specialist · Supply Technician (Supply Tech) · Surgical Instrument Technician (Surgical Instrument Tech) · Surgical Sterile Processing Technician (Surgical Sterile Processing Tech) · Travel Sterile Processing Technician (Travel Sterile Processing Tech)