The job responsibilities of a Medical assistant can vary depending on the state and also on type of office. However, one thing that is common is that this profession is very important in ensuring the smooth operations and running of a medical unit, be it a clinic, medical center or a doctor's office. A medical assistant's key role is to help physicians and doctors in doing some of the basic clerical jobs as well as performing some administrative tasks.

For all those candidates, who want to excel in the medical field, profile of a medical assistant can be a good option. Numerous medical assistant training programs in all suburbs and major cities such as NYC are offered by leading medical institutes. Getting hands on the right institute can shape your future in this profession. Now let's have a look at what are the major categories of medical assistant job and what their job responsibilities are:

• Clerical Assistant: Job of such professionals is to perform some of most basic duties which are essential for smooth functioning of a medical unit. Some of their job duties include greeting the patients, typing memos and letters, answering the phone calls, sorting mails and scheduling appointments of patients with doctors. The kind of job profile these assistants have is quite similar to any clerical profile in a regular office setting.


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• Medical Assistant: Duties of medical assistants depend on the state law. Their work structure is highly crucial and quite different from a clerical assistant. The tasks they perform are related to medical field. Some of them are recording medical history of patient, helping medical professionals such as doctors during examinations, preparing the patients for medical procedures, sterilizing equipment, collecting lab specimen, removing sutures, drawing blood and taking electrocardiograms.


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• Administrative Assistant: As suggested by the name itself, their job is more administrative in nature. However, the kind of work they perform is an amalgamation of the above two types of assistants. Some of their job responsibilities include submission of medical forms, keeping patient’s records up to date, arranging medical visits, scheduling of medical tests, etc.


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• Specialized Assistants: As understood, these professionals achieve specialization in one particular area and carry additional job responsibilities as compared to any other assistant. For example, an assistant who works with an optometrist would be specialized in that particular field. He would be trained in carrying activities such as testing the patient's eyes, providing guidelines on how to use lenses correctly, etc.

A number of reputed and good schools provide not only medical courses but I.T. courses as well such as computer networking security courses, etc. Getting enrolled in institutes that provides good training programs that offers practical exposure can help you ace this field.