subject: How to be a Medical Assistant? [print this page] How to be a Medical Assistant? How to be a Medical Assistant?
If you are looking for a suitable discussion to know the finer aspects of being a medical assistant, then please keep reading A medical assistant helps general physicians, podiatrists, chiropractors and other doctors in terms of administration and performing clinical tasks on behalf of them.
Like registered nurses, medical assistants also get to interact with a lot of people on everyday basis. Almost on the lines of a personal assistant, a medical assistant requires a lot of multitasking (art of doing many things at the same time, without any of the tasks getting hampered). After getting an overview of the duties performed by medical assistants, we can definitely conclude that they perform non-surgical tasks in a doctor's office. The set of duties can change, but they might not involve surgical aspects.
Medical assistants would learn a lot of medical terminology, clinical procedures, medical ethics and many laboratory based techniques.
Educational Prerequisite
To be a medical assistant, you would be required to complete high school diploma and then go for training. The type of training and the concerned experience would help you get a better pay scale. After high school, you can volunteer at local hospitals, clinics and medical offices to get a first hand training in the field of medical assisting. Many universities offer one year certification courses in this field. Community colleges offer a valuable 2 year associate program as well. Being equipped with decent computer skills is an added advantage.
With a decent salary bracket and a heavy requirement, being a medical assistant at the start of your career can open the door to many other related fields. Recent high school pass-outs who are starting their career search can benefit greatly from this field. Also, it is a myth that only women can become medical assistants. No doubt, a major part of the medical assistant workforce happens to be women, but men can also excel in this field.
In large setups medical assistants concentrate more on a certain discipline more. In fact, there is a nice chance that medical assistants move on to become supervisors of their respective departments.
