Medical Assistant 101 - Duties And Responsibilities Of Medical Assistants

What is a Medical Assistant? Today, medical assistants are one of the fastest growing professions in the health care business. Figures show that this job is estimated to rise for the next ten years due to the progression of medical equipment and the growing number of inhabitants around the globe.

If you desire to become a medical assistant, you don't need a master's degree. All you need is your high school credential or a GED equivalent. Aspirant medical assistants must simply undergo programs which will only take six months to two years to accomplish.

The course for medical assisting includes the fundamental medical terminology, anatomy and physiology and supplementary administrative training like recordkeeping, accounting, transcription, and so on and so forth.

The program courses are purposely designed to help hopeful medical assistants to be authoritative and competitive in their chosen vocation. This is because medical assistants' nature of work is to perform or to keep medical establishments structured and to keep it running smoothly. Also, since medical assistants are directly working with patients and with other medical employees like doctors and nurses, their program courses also include patient relations, ethics and medical laws and principles.

Medical assistant is different from a physician assistant or a nurse. Medical assistants carry out clerical and clinical tasks while nurses are more on treatments and patient handling.

In general a medical assistant handles administrative duties and or clinical duties.

1. Administrative Tasks

- Answering telephone calls
- Serve patients and families
- Appointment scheduling
- Fiscal recording and billing
- Clerical
- Handling correspondence
- Filing and updating patient's medical records
- Handles insurance forms
- Arranging hospital admissions
- Assisting in laboratory services

2. Clinical Tasks
- Taking patient's health history
- Recording patient's vital signs
- Preparing patients for medical examinations
- Assisting doctors in health examinations
- Explaining to patients the procedures that are to be done to them
- Collects and prepares the laboratory specimens
- Purchasing medical materials and equipments
- Disposing of infected medical materials
- Preparing medical instruments
- Making sure that hospital quarters such as waiting rooms and examination rooms are clean and tidy

In some hospitals medical assistants are authorized, under the supervision of doctors to carry out elemental medical tasks such as:
- Basic laboratory tests
- Prepare medications and administer medications as well
- Instructing patients in taking medications and some diets
- Drug refills
- Draw blood
- Changing of dressings
- Removing sutures

Since medical assistants have a large scope of tasks, they should at all times stay focused and systematic. They must possess pleasing personality and must be good communicators for they must make the patients feel comfortable and easy before and or during examination. Also, medical assistants must be prim and well groomed for they should look presentable when dealing with patients.

Duties and tasks of medical assistants vary depending in the hospitals they work. In small hospitals or clinics they are to perform both administrative and clinical duties while in extensive hospitals where there are other medical employees, medical assistants are impelled to performed exclusive tasks under the supervision of the department administrators.

Regardless where medical assistants work, they are very functional in helping healthcare workers to perform their jobs more effectively and prolifically. As a consequence, the growing needs of people's medical attention are met through them.

By: Daryl B. Chapman

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