Professional Overview: Medical Assistant

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Outlining your career goals Kaplan University Professional Overview: Medical Assistant Medical assistants are of vital importance to the medical field. Through their interactions with patients, medical assistants provide support and assistance with making patients feel at ease when it comes to making a visit to a healthcare provider. A Medical Assistant is an allied health professional who assists physicians and other health care providers in their offices or other medical settings (Spokane, 1997-2003). There are so many ways in which a medical assistant can be deemed irreplaceable in the workplace. As defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, 2010) and the American Association of Medical Assistants (AAMA, 2003; AAMA, 2010), medical assistants are healthcare personnel who ensure the smooth operations of physician’s offices and other healthcare facilities, by performing a variety of administrative and clinical tasks. Administrative, or “front office,” tasks performed by include billing and coding, patient registration and scheduling appointments, among others. Clinical functions, also known as “back office” tasks, include phlebotomy, EKG and exam room preparation, among others. The Medical Assistant profession developed during World War II, at a time when nurses migrated in large numbers from physician’s offices to short-staffed hospitals. To bridge the resulting gap, physicians retrained medical secretaries to take on clinical duties in addition to their administrative role, leading to the unique administrative/clinical balance still found in the Medical Assistant profession (Taché &Chapman, 2004). While it is possible to start a career in medical assisting with on the job training, most employers prefer a formal education or training program. These programs are available from some vocational high schools, vocational schools, and in colleges
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