How Can Being a Medical Assistant Jumpstart Your Path to Medical School?

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Advantages and Duties

Being a medical assistant puts individuals in a position to utilize his or her administrative skills, as well as being considered the “right-hand” person to medical professionals such as a doctor and physician assistant, as well as administrative office personnel. Getting hands-on continued training and experience in performing tasks both in the medical office, as well as clinical settings can be of great advantage. Some duties might include scheduling appointments, recording patient history and information, assisting in patient exams, drawing blood, recording vitals, and other clinical and medical office duties.

Academics

Courses cover anatomy, medical terminology and coding, transcription, record keeping, accounting and insurance processing, customer service, doctor/patient confidentiality, medical ethics, medical law, organization and operation of medical equipment.

Different Types of Medical Assistants

There are different types of medical assistants. Getting the hands-on training, both in the office and in clinical settings, can open up the doors of the path of medical school because being a medical assistant gives someone experience and understanding of the overall medical basics. Understanding medical terminology, along with daily administrative and clinical duties, will help with gaining the knowledge of medical laws and regulations within the medical practices.

This gives one a truly solid start to understanding the requirements in medical school and what will be involved. While having a college education is not required to become a medical assistant at entry levels, the pay and opportunities will be much more open if one becomes certified and registered through the American Medical Technologists, the American Association of Medical Assistants and the Certified Electronic Health Records Specialists. Being certified and registered will give you more opportunities for management positions.
The different types of medical assistants are the clinical medical assistants who work beside the doctors, but also in an office setting performing tasks needed to help keep things working smoothly. They might schedule appointments, answer phones, receive patients, take and record vitals, assist with daily paperwork and administrative duties as needed.

An administrative medical assistant deals more with patient and their responsibilities may include managing patient files, helping patients with hospital admissions and procedures, processing insurance claims, assisting with patient billing, scheduling labs and so on.

A specialized medical assistant might work in cardiology and may require extra training where they might assist doctors in minor office surgery, injections, lab requisitions, checking med levels, electrocardiograms, pharmacology, hematology, urinalysis and other duties that are specific to the field.

BLS Information

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the medical assistant’s field is growing extremely fast at 31% between the years of 2010 and 2020. In the lower percentile, one will make around $21,000 per year and the median being around $29,000 per year and the higher percentile is around $42,000 per year. The medical assistant field is solid with doctors training them many times on the job and exposing them to the type of experience that will be priceless, if they chose to continue on to medical school. Having medical assistance experience will help a medical student excel through many courses due to previous experience and training. The overall salary can vary due to size of a company, region, and education, if any, experience.