Medical Assistant Student Skills

Assessing Medical Assistant Student Skills

The path to success begins with education and training. Formal training in a medical assisting program is NOT always required. Employers (doctors) often take on the responsibility of training and supervising their own medical assistants and let them know specific expectations they have. Along with the responsibility of training and supervising their own medical assistants, these employers must take on responsibility for adequate quality control when assigning tasks, especially in the back office's clinical areas, to assure safety. 

Medical Assisting Training On the Job

There are different avenues to learn a job and still many employers, usually physicians with their own private practice, prefer to train their medical assistants according to their own specific needs right in their office. Whether trained via a vocational training program, trade school, community college, or under the direct supervision of a doctor, it is important to make sure the medical assistant student is attentive and directly engaged, receives clinical supervision and expert instruction to reach proficiency in the necessary skills. The student medical assistant's role and responsibilities must be clearly communicated and performance should be periodically assessed to assure that they will handle their duties well and stay within their scope of practice. 

What Doctors Who Train Medical Assistants on the Job Should Know

Most well versed Medical assistants know what the doctors want. They have learned it over the years on the job. However, new graduates very likely don't. The externship site would be a great place to start teaching them at least some of these values before they graduate, even if it was just one or two.

For the sake of everybody involved and running the medical office proficiently and safely doctors who welcome medical assistant students on externship should have a clear outline as to what they want these medical assistant students to learn on the job and convey this to their office managers and other medical office staff involved.

We have been told by student medical assistants who were placed in an office and were expected to work right along the staff, without much feedback, and instructions. Some stated, they were desperately looking to fit in, but did not receive the guidance that would have pointed them in the direction they needed to go.

Unfortunately, many student medical assistants on externship are regarded as free help, rather than students. Indeed, they can be free help, but it should be a WIN-WIN situation for everybody, not just the office. So, some of the responsibilities also falls on the medical office staff, and doctors at the externship site.

  What Do Doctors Want? 

• Medical Assistant Skills
  
  Medical Assistant Routines >> A medical assistant ought to take every opportunity to solidify and further their knowledge and skills to set their own bar high.