Medical assistants' specific duties are determined by the doctors they work for.
Medical assistants are important not only in the clinic, but also in the front and back offices of a doctor's practice. They perform clinical duties like taking blood or giving injections, and administrative assignments like bookkeeping, answering phones and updating files which help the office run smoothly. Medical assistants work for different kinds of doctors, and each doctor chooses the duties that his medical assistant has to perform.
More Important
Clinical duties may not be more important for a medical assistant than his administrative duties. The balance of responsibilities depends on the particular doctor the assistant works for. In bigger offices medical assistants may also report to an office administrator and to a department administrator if he works in a large, multi-doctor practice.
Administrative
Administrative skills are essential in making a physician's office run effectively. Some medical assistants are known only as administrative medical assistants. Their tasks revolve mainly around the paperwork and other office-related responsibilities of the physician's office. They may fill out insurance forms, update medical records and file them and schedule lab tests or hospital admissions. They may also schedule appointments, do billing, handle the mail, serve as receptionist for patients, answer the phones and do bookkeeping.
Clinical
If a medical assistant does mostly clinical work, she may be known as a clinical medical assistant. Some of the tasks may include taking and recording vital signs, getting medical histories from patients, helping doctors during exams and explaining how treatment procedures work to patients. They may also collect samples for lab tests and run basic tests. They may also prepare and give medications, call in prescriptions to pharmacies, take out stitches or get patients ready for x-rays. A medical assistant's clinical duties will vary, depending on the particular state in which she works.
Both
Sometimes medical assistants have to handle both clinical and administrative tasks for a doctor's office. Between billing, scheduling, preparing patients for procedures and taking vital signs, these medical assistants have a wide range of specialized skills to their credit. They have more variety in their days than a medical assistant that works primarily either as an administrative or clinical medical assistant.
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