What are the key responsibilities of medical assistant?

Nowadays, doctors are extremely busy in hospitals or clinics, due to upcoming of increased health issues of people. This is where they need an employee from whom they can get their work done. Consequently, this is where other than nurses, medical assistants come into picture!

Basically, they are an intermediary between doctor and patient. Where a nurse has to only take care of patients and report to the doctor, an aide has to perform variety of tasks. However, to be expert in handling the responsibilities, one needs to undergo medical assistant training program from a certified institute.

Besides certified factor, one must also take into consideration few other factors like skilled lecturers, small class size, hands on training, accredited program, internship and job placement etc.

Following are the duties that an aide has to take on during his or her job in medical center and thus would be taught during the training session. Initially, duties are divided into two parts:

Clinical: This task comprise of working with patients in a clinical context. In other words these duties are related to medical practice. However, it may vary from one state to another, depending on the working conditions. For example, if there are many patients in a hospital then there would be an immense need of assistants, comparatively to the place where only few patients come. Basic duties that are covered under this part are:

• Taking vital signs
• Noting patients medial history
• Prepare metal tests and examinations
• Sterilize instruments
• Removing sutures
• Explaining procedures
• Administrating medications

Administrative: This comprise of duties that are less directly involved with patients, but involves front-office medical practice. In other words this are in context to handling of appointments, billing functions, as well as various other duties that has been mentioned below:

• Answering phone calls
• Greeting patients
• Filling out insurance forms
• Scheduling patient medical procedures
• Following up on patient visits
• Sorting mails
• Updating patient charts
• Ordering lab tests
• Filing patient medical records
• Maintaining confidentiality of patient information
• Managing inventory and ordering supplies
• Billing patients
• Working with insurance companies
• Managing petty cash

Having discussed all the above duties, you must have got an idea that if you aspire to be an aide then you need to thoroughly be aware of these. So, before you opt for medical assistant career make sure that you have basic knowledge about all the necessary things that would be beneficial to you during your training session.