Medical Assistant: Duties of a Medical Assistant

Most of the people have been to a doctor's clinic and know how busy the facility is. There are many tasks that are done and many patients to be handled. Doctors are not able to carry out all the tasks all by themselves and need someone to help them for doing the simple tasks. This is where medical assistants come into the scene.

Who is a Medical Assistant?

Medical assistants are professionals from the clinical field who are responsible for carrying out minor tasks in doctors' offices or other health care facilities. With the help of medical assistants, physicians can concentrate on their primary obligation of patient care and treatment. These medical professionals help in keeping patient traffic running smoothly without any hassles. They give an ordered feel and appearance to the facilities they work in. Be it administrative medical assistant duties or clinical medical assistant duties, the responsibilities may vary depending on the setting of employment. Read more on hospital jobs.

Medical Assistant Duties and Responsibilities

A certified medical assistant duties and responsibilities include:

• Greeting patients, assessing and interviewing them regarding fundamental details of their problems and disorders.
• Rendering direct client services, like, administering first aid to sick and injured patients, recording vital signs, gathering and processing laboratory samples and carrying out other authorized medical tests and procedures.
• Referring and directing people and patients to appropriate medical facilities or outside agencies for physical and psychological health services.
• Acting as a liaison with external agencies and facilities to formulate implementation of beneficial services and programs.
• Aiding in quality assurance services including development and maintenance of ward-wise procedures as per the requirements.
• Drafting reports, writing proposals, distributing informational packages to patients and their relatives, ordering and maintaining inventory and preparing medical examination areas for everyday use.
• Dealing with all the important paperwork, filing laboratory slips and insurance data onto medical charts and handling medical billings and claims.
• Trying to obtain essential information about patients, such as their medical records, surgical history, habits, social behavior, vital signs, etc.
• Reexamining patients' current drugs and medications and ensuring the absence of any side effects or allergies.
• Being the most important point of contact for patients as well as doctors regarding all medical requirements.
• Counseling patients regarding appropriate medications, side effects, treatments, healthy diet and aftercare.
• Preparing and aiding patients for examinations, treatments and other medical processes carried out by the clinical staff.
• Monitoring patients throughout the testing process and maintaining and updating the level of skill required to execute several medical assistant duties.
• Responding to patients' concerns personally or by telephone while at the same time documenting the problem.
• Conducting training and development activities for new medical assistants, updating the facility's medication list and present problem list, and in some cases, handling tasks of the front desk.
• Sterilizing medical equipment and tools, putting new bedsheets, disposing off waste materials properly and restocking the facility with the required supplies.

Read more on medical assistant job description.

Place of Work and Salary

Generally, medical assistants provide their services in offices of doctors, public and private hospitals, inpatient and outpatient centers and offices of other medical practitioners. The pay scale for medical assistants differs greatly, counting on their years of work experience, level of expertise and location. The average per annum starting salary of these professionals is between $30,000 to $35,000, whereas after some amount of experience, the salary ranges from $35,000 to $40,000. Nowadays, those who are well-versed in performing orthopedic medical assistant duties are in great demand. Read more on:

• Certified Medical Assistant Exam
• Medical Jobs

Note:- The salary ranges are subject to change according to financial situations.

These were the general medical assistant duties and responsibilities. Many specific obligations can be added as per the facility requirements. Hopefully, by reading the above article, you should have learned much about medical assistant duties.