Changes In Medical Assistant Training From the Past to Now and Future

Around the late 1990s the expectations doctors had of their medical assistant began to change. The changes were very subtle at first. As medicine, occupations, laws and technology progressed doctors also changed the way they run their office and how medical assistants were utilized in the medical office. Today, the vast majority of employers, which are doctors, licensed healthcare practitioners and large and small medical centers are no longer spending the amount of time training their own medical assistants directly on the job, and they are no longer satisfied with medical assistants having received a certificate, if that much, from non-accredited, unrecognized training programs (according to D. Rincon, Head Instructor for medical assisting training and certification, San Francisco City College, 2004).

Is the Workplace and Hiring Practices Changing?

The nature of today's workplace is different from that of the past. It is characterized by fierce competition, cultural diversity, new technologies and new management processes that require medical assistants to have critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills as well as advanced levels of job training and practical skills. Although graduation from an accredited program is not required to enter into the medical assisting occupation most doctors today prefer hiring and refining the skills of well trained medical assistants who graduated from a recognized vocational training program and the aim to get certified as soon as possible. They feel that this kind of hiring practice from vocational training institutions will pay off  in the long run.

Are Today's Medical Offices "High Tech" Facilities?

The force that spurs this trend is the ever growing need for doctors and medical facilities to comply with federal, state and local laws and various government regulations that oversee how they run their medical practice. The rapidly escalating risk of litigation forces them to implement better procedures into their daily practice and office management routine and hire better qualified and trained staff. 

Aside from laws and regulations that govern the practice of medicine medical offices, clinics and medical centers must ensure the conduct and operation of the centers  is in a manner that will protect the public and their health. This includes keeping abreast with the newest administrative, technical, and computer skills and pass this knowledge on to the appropriate staff members and teams. High tech office machinery and medical computer programs are now used in just about every kind of healthcare setting and often a medical assistant will be put in charge of many automated tasks, including diagnostic screening, read-outs, monitoring of patients on the clinical floors, and word processing, financial spreadsheets, databases for billing, scheduling, account updating, insurance processing and medical transcription in the administrative areas.

What Will The Future Bring?

An increasing number of organizations in different US states mandate that medical assistants must be certified to perform needle injections; for example such as for allergy testing, purified protein derivative (PPD) testing, or Mantoux skin tests. Other states require medical assistants to have special training if their job requires them to expose patients to X-rays. Those with blood drawing responsibilities in California and those who perform point of care testing in Georgia are now REQUIRED to be certified medical assistants, or phlebotomists.

Can Medical Assistants Do IV Tubing?

Medical assistants in Alaska are not permitted to insert urinary catheters, start IV tubing, and administer medications into an IV unless they are specifically trained and certified in their field.

More and more medical assistants are embracing these new concepts and trends and voluntarily sit for various certification and credentialing exams as a first step to a new future.

 Discuss: Licensing of Medical Assistants