Medical Assistant Jobs: Roles, Duties & Job of a Medical Assistant Explained

This guide will let you learn about medical assisting. Maybe you’re thinking about becoming a medical assistant yourself or may just be interested in landing one of the medical assistant jobs.

This guide will look at what the duties of medical assistants are. We will be looking at what you can do to take the next steps in becoming a medical assistant in just a few short months without leaving the comfort of your home and without going into student debt.

If you’ve ever wondered if you’ll be able to work as a medical assistant, or if you were wondering if this career is right for you or not, you’ll get a lot of clarity reading this guide.

What is Medical Assistant

Medical assistants are medical professionals who work alongside physicians in outpatient clinics and facilities. This can be a regular medical office. It can be in a lab or even a local government agency. But they work with the physician to help streamline their workflow. This enable physicians have the ability to treat their patients effectively and efficiently. So they’re a very vital role within the medical clinic.

Medical assistants can wear different hats and play different roles within a medical facility. There are two main types of medical assistants. You have your clinical medical assistant and your administrative medical assistant.

Medical Assistant Job Description

Clinical medical assistants are the ones that you typically see when you go to the doctor’s office. They’re the ones that pull you back, obtain your vitals, go through your patient medical history, and get you ready for your examination.

They also perform a variety of duties, such as drawing labs, running tests, giving injections, performing simple procedures, and doing tests like EKGs and spirometric. But they’re very vital in helping the physician treat the patient while they’re there.

So clinical medical assistants are vital in helping to ensure that the physicians have what they need to perform their duties to help the patient get to a better, healthier state. In addition to their direct patient care duties, clinical medical assistants also have a variety of administrative clinical tasks.

This can include;

• Ensuring that patients are going to the referred doctors.
• Making sure that notes are coming in from referring doctors so that the physician is able to see what kind of treatments they’ve had outside their practice.
• Medical Assistants also help with prior authorizations and insurance verifications for medications, any kind of procedures, or any kind of special tests, such as CT scans and ultrasounds.

The second role for medical assistants is the administrative medical assistant role. In this role;

• They’re typically at the front doing check-in and check-out, posting payments, and doing insurance verification.
• They’re following up on patient appointments, making sure that those have canceled, are rescheduled, making sure that the ones that are checking out have a follow-up appointment scheduled for the next time.
• They are also responsible for making sure that the medical record has all the important information that it needs, such as your patient registration, any kind of consent forms, any kind of insurance verification forms.

But as different as these roles may be, they definitely overlap. And this is because medical assistants have training in both clinical and administrative duties. So it’s not uncommon to see a clinical medical assistant doing administrative work, or vice versa.

So depending on the size of your medical facility and what is needed in your medical facility, you may be asked to do both. If you really want to be a part of someone’s patient care team and help patients directly, becoming a medical assistant is such a great way to start.

How to Become Medical Assistant

Generally speaking, nursing students as well as medical students, they have to go through post-secondary school, which can mean years of schooling and nouns of student debt.

But for medical assistants, you really just need your high school diploma or a GED. This will allow you to get into the program and to complete your certification exam and become licensed to help patients. And this is the best way to get into the medical field and jumpstart your career

What Does The Medical Assistant Do

So now that you have a clearer idea on the different things that a medical assistant can do, what can you expect on a day-to-day basis?

What Do Medical Assistants Do in Clinics?

For clinical medical assistants, you are expected to greet the patient when they arrive and to pull them back for their vitals and to get them prepared for their examination that day.

Depending on what they’re coming in for, you may have to get them undressed or you may have to get them undressed in a particular way or fashion if they’re having a particular procedure done.

You’ll also want to make sure that you set up the room exactly the way that your physician requires, so that way it’s easier for the physician to complete their examination without having any interruption.

Additionally, clinical medical assistants may be asked to do injection, measure medications, perform extra procedural testing such as auditory testing for hearing loss, or do a visual acuity test.

They may also be a part of a patient’s procedure if they’re having surgery that day, and they may work alongside physicians to help with wound care and after care instructions.

So what about when patients are not being seen in the office or in between patients? What do medical assistants do then? For clinical medical assistants, they typically take this time to do their administrative clinical duties. This is referred to as their downtime, and in this downtime, they may have to go through our paperwork and fill out any kind of forms that patients have brought in, call any patients back we have called in with a question, do medication refills, and follow up on referrals and labs.

And on top of that, medical assistants also are part of the prior authorization process to make sure that if a patient needs a specific test, such as a nerve conduction test or a sleep study, that they get that pushed through the insurance for coverage before we can get the patient scheduled.

So that’s typically what a day-to-day basis looks like for a clinical medical assistant.

What Do Administrative Assistants Do?

Administrative medical assistants, on the other hand, their day is a little different.
What they typically do is they are part of the check-in and check-out process, and they also help schedule patients.

They’re usually the first line of communication when a patient calls in, and they’ll be the ones to patch the call back to whichever clinical medical assistant that needs to answer that phone call.

They are also part of the insurance verification program, so you may be asked to do insurance verification either the day before or the day of, and you’re also in charge of posting payments and closing out the entire account at the end of the day.

Additionally, administrative medical assistants take part in making sure that a patient’s medical chart is complete. This includes any kind of patient registration forms, any patient consent forms, as well as any authorizations for release of information. They are also in charge of obtaining records and sending records if they get a request in.

Medical Assistant Skills

What kind of skills do you need to be a successful medical assistant?

Like People

Well, first off, one of the things that you have to do as a medical assistant is you have to generally like people. Having that kind of likeness towards others will definitely help you in opening communication to your patients, whether you be at the front or at the back end helping patients directly.

Communication

Another vital skill for medical assistants is communication. You want to make sure that you have good communication skills, and you want to do that because you are the first person that a patient may interact with, and if you come off as judgmental or if you come off as confronting, some patients may find that intimidating, and they may withhold important medical information that you need to relate to the physician to help them get the help that they need.

So, making sure that you have clear communication, you’re non-judgmental, and your verbal and non-verbal skills are open and inviting, it allows for patients to be comfortable with you to build that rapport so that way they can trust you with their medical information.

Attention to Detail

Another important skill for medical assistants is attention to detail. The reason is that a medical record is a legal document, and anytime you do something, you want to make sure that you write it down exactly how you did it and exactly how the patient responded to it.

So, having that attentiveness to detail can really help your office whenever it comes to times of litigation or when you come across a patient who says that they had one thing done, but has something totally different done. So, that medical record and that attentiveness to detail is so important to make sure that you yourself are protected and that your medical office is protected.

Accountability

The last skill that I want to highlight is accountability. Even if you make a mistake as a medical assistant and you may have injected someone with the wrong medication, you want to be accountable for that. You want to show that you’re trustworthy, that you’re honest, and that you’re responsible.

There are measures in place to help kind of navigate that kind of difficulty if you’re ever in that situation, so don’t be afraid. You’ll definitely want to make sure that you do everything correctly the first time, but they are all human and they make errors. And so, if you do make an error on something for a patient or on a medical record, take accountability for that. And you have to have that as one of your core values of being a medical assistant is to have that accountability.

So, again, you have that trustworthiness with your employers and with your patients. So, finally.

Requirement To Become Medical Assistant

Here are a few basic requirements that are needed in order for you to become a medical assistant.

• Make sure that you have your high school diploma or your GED.

• Make sure that whatever program you’re going into for medical assisting is at an accredited college or university.

• Take certification exam, and once you pass, you are on your way to becoming a part of a healthcare team with your licensure.

This is such a great jumpstart for anyone who wants to get into the medical field.

FAQs

Conclusion

There are different types of medical assistants, like an administrative medical assistant or a clinical medical assistant. You learn about the major difference between the two, plus how your roles might change depending on what you were hired for.

Finally, we also break down how to prepare for your day when you start working as a medical assistant.