What Does A Medical Assistant Do?

What Does A Medical Assistant Do?

The demand for medical assistants continues to grow, especially in the United States where health care shortage has required many doctor’s offices to rely more heavily on medical assistants to perform basic tasks, like first contact with a patient, taking blood pressure or medical histories and possibly performing some tests like ultrasounds or blood tests. This often varies according to the needs of the medical office and local state laws. What a medical assistant often depends upon their qualifications, training and the needs of a specific medical practice. They often have dual roles, performing both clerical work and working with patients. 

In most cases Medical Assistant are trained on the job to meet the needs of the medical office. However, there are also many types training programs both formal and informal to help meet the basic needs of office medical assistants.  

St. Augustine Educational Services now offers a convenient online course to help students learn about working as a medical assistant. Online program details are available at:  http://www.medassistant.org/program_details.html

Medical Assistant Questions

Common Questions about Medical Assistants:

 

What Medical Assistants Do?

Medical assistants complete administrative and clinical tasks in the offices of physicians, podiatrists, chiropractors, and other health practitioners. Their duties vary with the location, specialty, and size of the practice.

Work Environment?

Most medical assistants work in physicians' offices and other healthcare facilities. Most work full time.

How to Become a Medical Assistant?

In most states, there are no formal educational requirements for becoming a medical assistant. Most have at least a high school diploma. Many assistants learn through on-the-job training. Many Medical Assistant also take classes online or at local community/junior college. St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants is now offering a comprehensive program online for Medical Assistants to study and review the basics of working in a medical office as a Medical Assistant.  

What is the Average Pay?

The median annual wage of medical assistants was $28,860 in May 2010.

What is the Job Outlook for Medical Assistants?

Employment is expected to grow by 31 percent from 2010 to 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations. Demand will stem from physicians hiring more medical assistants to do routine administrative and clinical duties so that physicians can see more patients.

 How Can I Learn More About Online Courses?

You can view program details for the St. Augustine School of Medical Assistants online course at: 

http://www.medassistant.org/program_details.html

What is a MOOC?

A massive open online course (MOOC) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in the area of distance education, and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources.

Though the design of and participation in a MOOC may be similar to college or university courses, MOOCs typically do not offer credits awarded to paying students at schools. However, assessment of learning may be done for certification. MOOCs originated from within the open educational resources movement and connectivist roots. More recently, a number of MOOC-type projects have emerged independently, such as Coursera, Udacity, edX^. The prominence of these projects' founders, contributing institutions, and financial investment helped MOOCs gain significant public attention in 2012. Some of the attention behind these new MOOCs center on making e-learning more scalable either sustainable or profitable.