Clinical Matters

By SCMA On 23/02/2016  

As an SCMA professional, you will be required to perform a myriad of clinical tasks. Even though these duties may seem mundane and repetitive, they are more important than you realize.

As a Specialty Certified Medical Assistant (SCMA®), you will be required to perform a myriad of clinical tasks. Even though these duties may seem mundane and repetitive, they are more important than you realize. Taking patients' vitals, recording their medical histories and prepping them for the physician's examination allows you a particularly keen view into their overall health, emotional wellness and medical needs.

Patients often feel a kinship with medical assistants, especially those who show empathy and give attention to details, revealing important symptoms and worries that may factor into their future care. Sometimes it takes a blend of education, understanding and inventiveness to collect a specimen from a child, take a patient's blood, or remove sutures from a moving target. Never underestimate the significance of medical assisting and building relationships makes all the difference in long term patient care.

Attention to Detail

12 Important Things Medical Assistants Do

• Update medical histories to protect patients from medical error, which includes taking vital statistics and data.
• Prepare patients for the physician's exam, procedure or testing.
• Answer questions and explain treatments.
• Collate paperwork and collect lab results.
• Arrange and perform minor lab tests.
• Dispense recommended medication and relay the physician's instructions for at-home care.
• Aid in the transfer of patients and their medical apparatus from one room to another for treatment and procedures.
• Confirm prescription refills, pharmacies and interactions as directed by physician.
• Sterilize medical equipment to ensure patient safety.
• Draw blood, bandage wounds, assist with splints and casts, and take electrocardiograms.
• Take off bandages, remove stitches, staples and sutures, and redress wounds.
• Dispose of hazardous waste materials properly and safely.

Outside the Box

Thinking Creatively to Administer Excellent Patient Care

If there's any rule to follow when administering patient care as an SCMA professional, it is the golden rule: treat others the way you'd like to be treated. You will have both good and bad days, easy and difficult patients; this is part of your job and is, also, the part of your job that requires the most effort.

Adopting an air of versatility and creativity will help you deal with these issues. Calming a child's fear of throat swabs with understanding, listening to older patients just because you know they need to talk, finding new, better ways to do old things, and being there to offer support when a patient gets bad news--these are just part of a day's work for a medical assistant. Putting your own unique spin on the healthcare wheel's challenges relays to your patients as well as the physicians that your work for that you care.