A career as a medical assistant is often a very rewarding and lucrative one. Medical Assistants are constantly in demand and command a good salary, so this is not only a career choice that you can be proud of, but you’ll also be fairly rewarded for your time.
The great thing about this career is that there are varying medical assistant duties and responsibilities available across the board, so your work is constantly kept interesting, keeping you involved and loving what you do. The duties of a medical assistant vary greatly, and there are a great number of medical assistant responsibilities.
Medical assistants work in many different types of places, so the location in which they choose to work will have a lot to do with what the medical assistant duties and responsibilities will be. Medical assistants can work in doctor’s offices, hospitals, medical clinics and large medical centers.
There are four main medical assistant duties and responsibilities. These are clerical, administrative, clinical and specialist duties. Medical assistants are trained to carry out one or all of these duties at any one time.
More than 60 percent of medical assistants work in doctor’s offices, meaning that more than half of the medical assistant duties and responsibilities will be clerical and administrative tasks. The duties of a medical assistant will vary depending on several factors such as the doctor you work for, how large the office is, and different dependencies on state laws. The responsibilities may also depend on how many medical assistants are on staff.
The medical assistant duties and responsibilities are unlimited. It will depend entirely on what the doctor or facility needs in terms of a working medical assistant. The medical assistant is there to assist the doctor in any of the procedures or office duties that he needs help with. These medical assistant responsibilities can include anything from answering the phone, to lab tests and results, to assisting the doctor during surgeries.
The clerical duties of a medical assistant may include performing tasks such as answering phones and providing answers, to anything from scheduling conflicts, to doctors orders and medication information. Medical assistant duties may also include completing paperwork such as mailing forms to patients, sending payment reminders, and mailing insurance information to patients. A medical assistant responsibilities can often times also involve handling incoming mail for the doctor and receiving any payments.
The medical assistant responsibilities requires the assistant to update files and maintain the file structures of the practice via the computer and (usually) company Intranet. The duties of a medical assistant may also require you to call patients at home as needed.
The duties of a medical assistant may also extend to administrative tasks such as filing insurance records and forms to ensuring proper payment of all office visits and procedures performed.
Other duties of a medical assistant involve arranging hospital admissions when ordered by the doctor. Some medical assistant duties and responsibilities may also include doing the billing and bookkeeping functions for the office. This will include updating payment files and accounting functions for the office. Some administrative medical assistant responsibilities will require you to order office supplies such as pens, paper, toilet paper and any other items that are used in the daily running of the office. The administrative duties of a medical assistant will include most functions that come with making sure the office is in order and performing at the correct pace. In essence these duties of a medical assistant are very similar to the duties of an office manager.
In addition to clerical and administrative tasks, a medical assistant duties and responsibilities may also include clinical duties. These duties of a medical assistant focus more on the medical side of things. Clinical medical assistant duties and responsibilities will include recording vital signs such as blood pressure, pulse rate, temperature, and respiratory rate. The medical assistant responsibilities will also include recording this information on the patients chart.
Medical assistant duties will often require you to take down and update patient histories, assist the physician in exams, administer medicines, explain treatments and side effects of certain medications, perform lab tests, take x-rays, exam vital signs, and take blood if needed.
Additional duties of a medical assistant in the clinical environment may include functions such as authorizing prescriptions, calling the prescriptions into pharmacies, disposing and sterilizing medical equipment, removing sutures, and changing wound dressings.
There are additional medical assistant responsibilities that may be required for specialist medical assistants. These are the medical assistants that have jobs with specialist doctors such as an ophthalmologist or a podiatrist. The duties of the medical assistant in these types of practices are extended even further. The medical assistant will perform all of the medical assistant duties and responsibilities described above in addition to duties specific to the practice and specialty that they work in.
Specialist duties may include, but are not limited to: diagnostic testing, vision and hearing tests, explanations on how to care for eye wounds and dressings, administering eye medications under a doctor’s supervision, and cleaning and disposing of any contaminated instruments. Additional duties of the medical assistant in a specialist setting will include performing pre-testing procedures, preparing castings, and advising the patient on proper care of castings.
The medical assistant responsibilities may also require you to assist the doctor during surgeries. A medical assistant responsibilities may include ordering supplies such as medical instruments that are used in surgeries and certain medical procedures such as needles, suture supplies and IVs. All of these medical assistant duties and responsibilities may be in addition to any other clerical and administrative medical assistant responsibilities that the assistant may be required to handle at any one time.
The responsibilities are highly varied. Each job will be different from the next as the doctor that you work for may want you to do different functions than another doctor may have asked for, but these varying duties are what makes being a medical assistant so interesting. There is always something to keep your mind working and accessing information.
If you want to be a medical assistant it is a good idea to have an open mind, be open to talking to new people every day, have the capacity to understand instructions and to follow any and all directions you are given. If you like taking care of people then this may well be the perfect career for you.