Medical Assistants and their Career Outlook

| Tuesday, March 6, 2012
By Leroy Dunne


Medical Assistants assist physicians to perform various administrative as well as clinical duties. Medical Assistants work in hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices and other healthcare facilities. The job of medical assistant depends on the type of healthcare facility they are working. Some assistants do patient and laboratory work exclusively. Others are responsible for medical records, bookkeeping, and answering phones. In most small offices, medical assistants may handle all these tasks.

Career overview

Medical assistants keep the offices of physicians, medical centers, and clinics running smoothly.Medical Assistants carry out clerical, clinical and administrative duties. Their responsibilities differ by office type, place, and dimension of practice. In little practices, medical assistants generally carry out a mixture of administrative and clinical duties. In big practices, where there might be a number of medical assistants, they tend to focus on a specific region. Generally medical assistants are categorized as clerical, administrative, clinical and specialists.

The clinical medical assistant's job description varies from one state to another. They perform various clinical duties within the health facility. They note down patient's medical history, assist physicians during examination, prescribe and order medications, sterilize medical equipments and perform other tasks. They can also perform jobs like explaining medical conditions and issues to the patient, collecting laboratory specimen, drawing blood, taking electrocardiograms, and removing sutures.

Medical Assistants should perform their duties carefully while assisting doctors for surgery. Before surgeries, their main duty is to sterilize all medical equipments required for the surgery. They have to prepare medications that are going to be used during surgery. Doctors also rely on them for the smooth running of the operation. They have to handle administrative duties like a clerk that are seen in a busy medical office. Medical Assistant career is the challenging one because you have to be careful about patient throughout the duty for hours. As a medical assistant, you should always be ready to help doctors and other medical professionals.

Earnings and Benefits

Usually, medical assistants employed at big clinics make more than those employed at smaller ones. Payscale.com reports that medical assistants employed at clinics with less than 600 workers make median salaries ranging from $26,000-28,000 yearly, while those employed at clinics with 600-5,000 workers make in between $36,000-37,000 yearly.




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