Read All About the Top Medical Assisting Skills

Are you looking to get into the field of medicine? If you’re looking into medical assisting jobs, the great news is that there is a career here with plenty of opportunity for advancement.

But before you get ahead of yourself thinking about where your job may take you, you need to begin your journey somewhere.

And before you begin, you need to make sure you have the proper skills to ensure you are qualified for the position you are applying for.

Medical assistants may be required to perform different duties each day, but the demand of these duties will most likely be consistent between all positions, so it’s a good idea to have a set of skills that range in a variety of abilities. The following skills are widely regarded as key to any medical assisting job.

Medical knowledge

First and foremost, medical knowledge is going to be at the foundation of your job requirements and thus should be prominently present in your skill set, things that you should have or things that you need to develop.

Read more on how to find resources to help you advance in your medical assisting journey.  

You should have strong clinical skills that include, but are not limited to the following:

• Patient Care
• Patient and Family Education
• Patient preparation
• Measuring Vital Signs
• Injections
• Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
• Electrocardiogram (EKG)
• Phlebotomy
• Life support
• Medical terminology

Safety and sanitation knowledge

The medical field is the business of health. Having ample knowledge of safety and sanitation procedures and regulations will be required for any job you apply for. Insufficient knowledge or improper practices will be detrimental to those around you, putting not only your job at risk but quite possibly people’s lives.

With that said employers should provide comprehensive training for medical assistants in this area if they want to truly help their patients. Refresher courses can help medical assistants get familiar with the job duties that protect patients the most.

Team and collaboration skills

You will, as a medical assistant, be working within a team of doctors, physicians, nurses, and should have the capability to collaborate and work well with your team members.

You will sometimes be tasked to problem solve or be prepared to work with your team for solutions to any situations that may arise. Inability to work with each other would be detrimental to your success and in the medical field, your success involves the welfare and lives of many people.

Customer service skills

You will be working in a people centered career. People are your business in the medical field. And this means you will have to maintain a cool head because when dealing with people, patience, understanding is a rarity but are things you must possess.

You must be able to split your attention while ensuring your customers, the patients, understand and feel they are being looked after. A positive patient experience will go a long way and may extend well past their day.

Strong communication skills

Communication is key no matter the field or job role you are in. As a medical assistant, you will be frequently dealing with all types of people and should be well equipped to communicate with them.

Your interactions may be with doctors, nurses, other medical staff, patients, families, office administrators, etc. Being able to communicate to patients not understanding medical jargon will be important to their ability to comprehend the situation. Your ability to communicate verbally and in writing in a clear and efficient manner will be required to have everything running and operating smoothly at all times.

Clerical and organizational skills

You will not only be working with a lot of people, but also a lot of paperwork. Not to mention you will have to multitask and juggle a bunch of things at once and your ability to stay organized in an office setting will be important.

A lot of people will depend on you to stay on top of things like schedules, appointments, documents, and inventory. There is a lot of information being communicated and exchanged, you need to be able to handle all of it and be able to relay it when requested.

Computer literacy skills

Everything these days is done through computers. Gone are the days of paperwork and storage units filled with tons of file folders.

You should be able to keep up with the technologies as they have made things easier to keep track of. These will be your tools of your day to day operations, and you need to be fluent in their usage.

Things like schedules and charts will be stored in databases that you need to have an understanding of, not to mention the many notes and documents you will have to manage.

After acknowledging the list of skills above, you can most likely recognize ones you do have and ones you don’t. That’s not a problem, there are plenty of classes you can take that offer the opportunity to develop new skills and hone the skills you currently possess. 

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