A medical assistant plays a very important role in healthcare profession. They mostly work in the physician’s offices and make sure the offices run smooth. They perform both administrative and clinical duties. Primary responsibilities of a medical assistant are to greet the patient, make a file for them, making phone calls to different departments such as medical supplies companies etc. They also manage the medical instruments, you will be seeing them making reminder calls to the patients for their appointments, helping people with booking or rebooking the appointments. They also help the patients filling the insurance forms; maintain the accounts for the physician’s office. Moreover, they maintain records and bookkeeping for the physician’s office.
Medical office assistants also perform major role on clinical side. They will be checking patient’s blood pressure, body temperature, pulse rate, and respiratory systems. They prepare the patient for the check-up and also explain the treatment procedures to them. A Benzo Withdrawal medical assistant helps physician while examining the patients. They also prepare the patients for the x-ray rooms and help them with the ultra sound procedure. The medical office assistants maintain the records and patient’s history, while physician examine the patient. It is the duty of medical office assistants to explain the patient’s medical history and present all submitted reports to the doctor. This helps physician to choose a better treatment plan for the patient. They sterilize the medical equipment and also dispose of any contaminated thing used during the treatment.
If you are interested to become a medical office assistant, you can join the training program offered by any medical assistant college. There are about 62% medical assistants working in physician’s offices, however some of them never went to any medical assistant college. They start working in physician’s offices and start learning from there as it takes an individual to learn in few months. But they need a medical assistant college to cover the theoretical part for the certification purposes. There are one year and two years programs offered in vocational schools and community colleges. Students spend one year for diploma and two years for an associate degree. While studying in these schools and colleges their study includes the subjects for both administrative and clinical training. Such as first aid, pharmaceutical principles, anatomy, drug administration and medical terminology. Similarly for administrative part, office practice, insurance processing, medical law, ethics and transcription is taught.
An assistant’s responsibility varies; at some places they will be only performing the administrative tasks, and at some place they will be working on the both sides. The certification is not a necessary requirement for the job purposes; however in order to get a handsome salary and to work in big organization, you need a certificate that indicates your skills and your professional status. This could be a reason that majority of hospitals are now demanding for the certified MAs. There are many associations providing the certification, you will have to appear in a certification exam known as “The Registered Medical Assistant (RMA)”, and it is accredited with The National Commission for Certifying Agencies. Or you can sit for The Certified Medical Assistant (CMA) certification exam accredited by the American Association of Medical Assistant (AAMA).