Starting a new career and wondering if you should become a medical assistant? Being a medical assistant can be rewarding if you are passionate about helping others, learning new things, and keeping up with advances in the industry.
However, is medical assisting a good career for you? First let’s explore what a medical assistant does on a day-to-day basis.
What Does a Medical Assistant Do?
A medical assistant is responsible for many aspects of a patient’s visit. As a medical assistant, you will be the patient’s liaison with the doctor and medical staff.
The patient relies on you to create a positive outcome. You will greet patients, take their vital signs, run diagnostics, and help educate them to take better care of themselves. As a medical assistant, you are responsible for the outcomes of patients’ visits, and just being there to help them during a stressful time can be rewarding.
Greeting Patients
The medical assistant is the first person whom many patients encounter in a physician’s office. As a medical assistant, you will greet patients in the waiting room and walk them back to the exam room. You will take their vital signs, record their medical history, and prepare them for the doctor and any procedures or exams.
Keeping a positive attitude and educating patients about everything they will encounter is a great way to keep them calm.
Taking Vital Signs
Part of the initial procedure during any visit is the taking of vital signs. By taking vital signs like blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and respiration rate, the doctor has a trend to look at to make better decisions about patients’ health and any treatments they may need.
If the patient has a high temperature, it may suggest an infection, while a patient with high blood pressure may require different care precautions. Taking vital signs is important and something that you will learn to do in a medical assisting program.
Running Diagnostic Tests
Your job as a medical assistant will include running diagnostic tests. From phlebotomy to EKG, you will be responsible for testing the patient and relaying the outcomes to the physician.
You will learn how to draw blood and prepare it for analysis. You will also learn how to administer an EKG and understand whether there are any artifacts that have skewed the results before you pass the output to the physician.
These diagnostic tests will be taught and mastered during a vocational program to better prepare you for a career in medical assisting.
Billing and Coding
During a vocational program, you will learn about billing and coding concepts. You will be trained in the different coding protocols like ICD-10, HCPCS, and CPT.
Each coding protocol will be used to record the diagnoses, procedures, and supplies that are used during a patient’s visit. These codes will be relayed to the insurance companies or Medicare in order for the physician’s office to be reimbursed for a patient’s care.
Patient Education
An important part of your job as a medical assistant will be educating patients. Whether it is about preventative or postprocedural care, you will help educate your patients to live happier and healthier lives.
During your training at a vocational school, you will build skills, like communication, that will help you better educate your patients and improve their outcomes.
Is Medical Assisting a Good Career?
Most medical assisting programs can be completed in under a year. Some are even measured in months rather than years. Medical assisting is a good career because it has many benefits and can get you earning quickly.
What Are the Benefits of Becoming a Medical Assistant?
There are many benefits to becoming a medical assistant and starting a career in the medical industry. Those benefits of a career in medical assisting include a quick start (usually in months), a good work-life balance, a supportive environment to work in, opportunities for advancement, and the good feeling that comes with helping others.
Quick Start
Since some medical assisting programs can be completed in seven and a half months for those who attend full-time, you can start your career in medical assisting quickly. Without the need to attend college for years, a vocational program prepares you for a new career quickly and completely.
Learn Everything You Need
Most four-year colleges require liberal arts classes. While these classes may be interesting, they don’t directly prepare you for a job as a medical assistant.
Vocational schools offer programs that focus specifically on the training and skills you need to get an entry-level position as a medical assistant. You will learn about anatomy, physiology, and many clerical duties that will prepare you for a career in medical assisting.
These vocational programs focus only on what you need to start your career, getting you the quickest start in an entry-level position at a physician’s office, urgent care, clinic, or other medical facility.
A Good Work-Life Balance
Medical assisting programs are flexible and can work around your schedule. Are you someone who has other responsibilities during the day? Many vocational programs can be taken in the evenings. This gives you the ability to go to school on your own time.
There is also a good work-life balance after you graduate because many medical assisting jobs have you work during normal business hours with weekends off, with the exception of emergency medicine or urgent care where hours differ.
A Supportive Environment
When you become a medical assistant and start working with colleagues at a physician’s office or other medical facility, you can enjoy working with other passionate medical professionals.
Opportunities for Advancement
With hard work, continuous learning, and certification, you can open up opportunities for advancement. The medical industry is also growing so new opportunities are opening up all the time.
Helping Others Is Rewarding
There is nothing better than seeing patients thrive. Whether they are in for a checkup or follow-up, seeing patients recover or stay healthy is rewarding because you had a hand in that outcome. Even when people get sick, you know that you are there for them and will work to make their outcome a positive one.
Final Thoughts
Helping patients is challenging but very rewarding. You can impact the lives of your patients and help them stay happy and healthy.
As a medical assistant, you also enjoy a good work-life balance and work in a supportive environment. In a medical assistant program, you prepare for a career, not just a job.
Now that you know that medical assisting is a good career, want to learn more? The Medical Assistant program at Hunter Business School prepares competent, entry-level medical assistants in the cognitive (knowledge), psychomotor (skills), and affective (behavior) learning domains required for professional practice.
The Medical Assistant program provides hands-on experience in a real medical setting where you can foster professional relationships with actual patients. Medical Assistant students spend 160 hours in an externship in a professional medical environment where they are supervised and taught in order to gain valuable on-the-job training.
Contact us today to find out more about how to become a medical assistant on Long Island.