From Novice to Expert Medical Assistant

Stages

Medical assisting is a popular career choice for all who like working in a medical setting to help people in their community, however, it does not come without unique challenges and hurdles. Like any professional, new medical assistants pass through a series of stages of development:

• novice
• advanced beginner
• competent
• proficient
• and expert
                                    Benner's Stages of Clinical Competence (1984)

Become the Successful Person You Deserve to Be!

More than 500,000 practicing physicians and hospitals in the USA rely heavily on their medical assistant staff, and job offers open and close daily. However, where so many are competing for the same positions, your future success (or failure!) depends largely upon your ability to stand out from the rest, and convince employers that you are the professional medical assistant they want.

According to Brenner's model, beginners have had no experience of the situations in which they are expected to perform, and thus, are taught rules to help them perform. The expert, on the other hand, no longer relies on an analytic principle (rule, guideline, maxim) to connect her or his understanding of the situation to an appropriate action. Time and experience had molded them into proficient performer! However, the basic rule never changes: being a medical assistant is about caring for people in the community.

Medical Assistant Responsibilities

Medical assistants handle many facets of the daily medical practice routine. You find them either in the front office's administrative, and reception area, or on the back office's clinical floors where they gather health insurance information from patients, record their demographics, take their vital signs, prepare them for their exams, organize medical records and paperwork, review medical charts, answer phones, respond to patient concerns, route messages, and respond to any other situations typical for a busy medical practice. In addition, they are expected to keep the doctors on schedule during their daily rounds, and open, and close the office when the day ends.