What Doctors Want...

Doctors want their Medical assistants to know a wide variety of skills pertaining to medical office administration routines and clinical tasks revolving around patient intake procedures, patient record management, medical history taking, setting up EKGs, spirometry, immunizations, blood draws, charting, measuring orthopedic fittings, and such. Some situations may involve biohazard risks where Universal Standard Precautions must be practiced to protect everybody, including self, staff, patients, and other visitors to the medical facility.

What Doctors Want... And Medical Assistant Schools Don't Know!

Submitted by a practicing physician
by M.D. on Jun 24, 2009 - 12:49AM

M.D., the doctor's forum name, tells us: "One overall thing I have a gripe about as a practicing physician is that the medical assistant schools are not teaching what I want."

1.) Do I want you doing my billing? In all honesty, no/zero/zilch. I do not want someone with very little experience keeping track of my billing, accounts receivable and aging reports and posting deposits that had 2 weeks of training in it. On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate this a 2 (nearly non-important). Medical assistant schools don't know this.

2.) Do I want you to be able to work computer appointments, or know manual appointment methods? Yes, in a pinch, but that is, in my opinion, the job of the front office person.

3.) Do I want you to know and understand medical terminology? Abbreviations? Yes, absolutely.

4.) Smart Phone, iPhone, tablet PC savvy? Would I *love* to have you be knowledgeable enough to know how to get Epocrates Online on your hand-held PC tablet/iPhone type thing (that you should be having)? Yes, absolutely. You should know how to use apps like this when looking up & giving meds. By the time a book is published, it is out of date. So forget those hardcopy nursing drug manuals - ancient history. (MA schools don't know this either).

5.) Room a patient? Yes, clean up the room from the last pt, get the chart, take VS, hgt, wgt, etc.!

6.) Know what is sterile? And what is not (& how to clean it up)? Yes absolutely, or we both get in trouble (financially or morally).

7.) Give injections? Yes. Know sites for various injections/ age group; IM, SQ, needle sites, gauge, syringe size.

8.) Know math? Absolutely. Don't kill my patients with a wrong dose EVER.

9.) Draw blood? Not super important as most offices send patients out to a lab. On a scale of 1-10 this is a 3. (MA schools don't know this).

10.) Phone triage? Yes. Know what is an emergency & what is not, & let me know right away.

11.) Electronic Medical Records? Of course! This is a big thing because teaching a new medical assistant how to properly enter basic patient demographics, current medications and vitals into the EMR can take up a lot of my time I could be spending with the patient. Medical assistant schools don't seem to realize the importance of this and with the latest trends, where more and more doctors will utilize EMR, lacking this skill could turn out to be a big stumbling block in a new medical assistant's career path.

12.) In-house small tests? (ie: Accucheck, Urine dip, PT, do an ECG)? Absolutely, & know to alert me STAT if any of these tests are really, in dangerous levels. Assist me with minor office surgeries/ procedures? Yes, if just to be there, be sterile, & hand me things, or put your finger over a bleeder. (Again, MA schools don't know this).

13.) Loyalty? Yes. Don't trick me, and I won't treat you badly either. We are a team.

14.) Most of all, I would LOVE to have someone who keeps track of labs (ie: whether the pt went & got them). If so, on my desk promptly AND let me know if 3-7 days has passed and I don't have the labs/ xrays etc.! Then we need to get after the patient/ lab company/ hospital & find out what is going on.

15.) To have someone who gets the discharge summary & orders from the hospital when a patient of mine comes back to the office (before they suddenly show up under my shingle). This they don't teach you in medical assistant school. This test follow-up is one of my biggest gripes about MA schools. And, they don't even mention it, but that is far more important to me than your even doing a blood pressure, which I can do myself, if push comes to shove.

I have called these medical assistant schools to find out what they are about education-wise (West Coast). Unfortunately, they do not even have a single MD/DO on staff for clinical guidance. This is a BIG mistake because people with Masters in Education are the program directors, and really, they can only guess what clinical practice involves - they have never experienced it.

"Formal" discussions to ascertain what is necessary isn't going to cut it with what I want for my practice as an M.D. You need to have been there. A nurse can't teach you really, what a physician needs either. So they do not make a good program directors. Lots of nurses *think* they know, but don't (unfortunately, some won't admit it to themselves).

What would I pay? $15 to $20/hr to start. A good MA is nearly priceless and guaranteed a job for life, IMHO. Be my "right hand", so to speak, and I will reward you accordingly.

Thanks for reading.

by M.D.
Jun 24, 2009 - 12:49AM

http://pub10.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=792761550&frmid=14&msgid=870673&cmd=show&cp=1 

ATTENTION: It must be clearly understood that medical assistants MUST always stay within their scope of practice regardless of their level of training!!! Medical assistants must practice ONLY methods and procedures that are commonly accepted in their profession, and in which they were properly trained.