Medical Assistants

A Day in the Life

After deciding to become a medical assistant, you learned that you had several distinct career paths available to you. As the medical field continues to diversify, demand for competent medical assistants is blossoming in the nation's hospitals and specialists' offices. Many new medical assistants now find employment with 24-hour clinics, charity hospitals and specialists like podiatrists and geriatricians. Some have become highly specialized: In fact, many medical assistants now function primarily as administrative assistants who update and synchronize patients' electronic health records.

However, you chose to take a more traditional career path and find employment with a primary-care practice in your area. Although you work in the same office every day and see many of the same patients, you appreciate the varied nature of your job. You're also a fan of the regular "nine-to-five" work schedule that gives you plenty of opportunity to spend time with your family and friends.

When you arrive at the office sometime before 9 a.m., you wash up and don the scrubs that you'll wear for the remainder of the workday. Before seeing the first patient, you check your office's schedule to see how the next few hours will unfold. It looks to be a busy morning.

You grab a notepad and call the first patient of the day into the examination room. You lead an older gentleman in with a smile and ask him how his morning has been going.

Once he's settled, you take his blood pressure and ask him a few basic medical questions. You carefully note each of his answers. Later, you'll transfer this information into an electronic health record system. The physicians who run your office have hinted that they may soon purchase mini-tablets that allow you to enter this information directly into the system from the examination room. You're excited by this prospect.

After you've taken his history, you draw the patient's blood in preparation for some standard blood work. While you won't actually perform these tests on your own, you're responsible for drawing and handling these blood samples. You thank the patient for his time, inform him that the doctor will arrive momentarily and take his blood sample to the on-site nurse who is responsible for analyzing it.

The rest of your morning proceeds in this fashion. After seeing each patient, you make sure to enter their information into the electronic system before calling the next one into the examination room. This ensures that your office keeps its records straight and doesn't expose itself to needless liability claims. On average, you would guess that 20 percent of the time you spend in the office is devoted to updating and maintaining its electronic health records.

After taking a half-hour break for lunch, one of the physicians in your practice asks you to give a routine vaccination to a small child. Since this is the first time that you've been asked to perform such a task, you're both nervous and excited. This represents a big step forward in your career as a medical assistant. Happily, the injection comes off without a hitch. You hope that this small victory proves to your superiors that you're capable of taking on even more complex and exciting tasks.

Although the last patient of the day won't come through the office until after 6 p.m., you're allowed to leave an hour early. As you drive home, you're glad to have a job that doesn't require you to work late into the evenings. The fact that your work as a medical assistant is interesting and personally rewarding doesn't hurt either.