From Novice to Expert Medical Assistant

Medical Assistant Responsibilities

Medical assistants handle many facets of the daily medical practice routine. You find them either in the front office's administrative and reception area, or on the back office's clinical floors where they gather health insurance information from patients, record their demographics, take vital signs, prepare them for medical assessments and exams, organize medical records, review medical charts, answer phones, respond to patient concerns, route messages, and respond to any other situations typical for a busy medical practice.  

More than 500,000 practicing physicians and hospitals in the USA rely heavily on their medical assistant staff and job offers open and close daily. Medical offices seek highly skilled medical assistants to keep it running smoothly and everything on track. However, where so many are competing for the same positions, your future success (or failure!) depends largely upon your ability to stand out from the rest. A good medical assistant will have to convince employers that they are the professional they want in their practice.

Stages of Competence

Medical assisting does not come without unique challenges and hurdles. Like any professional, new medical assistants must pass through a series of stages of development:

• novice
• advanced beginner
• competent
• proficient
• and expert
                                    Benner's Stages of Clinical Competence (1984)

Brenner's Model

According to Brenner's model, beginners have had no experience of the situations in which they are expected to perform, and thus, are taught rules to help them perform. The expert, on the other hand, no longer relies on an analytic principle (rule, guideline, maxim) to connect her or his understanding of the situation to an appropriate action. Time and experience had molded them into proficient performer. However, the basic rule never changes: being a medical assistant is about caring for people.