Medical Assistant Internship Duties

On the word of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an internship opportunity in medical assistance is the major initiation point of today’s rapidly-developing line of business in the health care industry. The precise job duties of a medical assistant intern take account of clerical, clinical, admin and other work responsibilities in cooperation. With the help of a medical assistant internship program, a candidate can get acquainted with the precise job duties. In fact, he/she can get hold of the essential knowledge that is required to work efficiently and resourcefully in various health care settings including clinics and hospitals. A medical assistant intern mainly assists the doctors, physicians and of course, the patients!

The various job duties and responsibilities of a Medical Assistant Intern are as follows:

Office Duties

In essence, a health care supervisor will explain the intern about the right procedures to perform these tasks effectively. Subsequently, the  medical assistant intern will follow the supervisor and implement his pre planned responsibilities. A medical assistant intern will be performing the office tasks in a physician’s work place. He/she will be given training to do the following tasks:

• Keep up a correspondence with peers, supervisors or subordinates: A medical assistant intern will provide the necessary information to the co-workers, supervisors and other staffs’ by different means of communication such as phone, mail, e-mail or personally.
  
• Assess information to determine conformity with standards: With the help of appropriate information and personal verdict, an intern will be trained to find out whether all the processes or events meet the terms with general laws, rules, regulations and standards.
• Taking and passing telephone messages for doctors, nurses and other medical staffs.
• Scheduling  appointments of the patients with the doctors.
• Completing and updating the health charts of the patients.

Clerical Job Responsibilities

In spite of doing the office tasks, a medical assistant intern would also be trained to carry out the essential clerical tasks of the medical office. He/she would learn to do the following clerical tasks:

• Administer and manage the insurance, finances and billing.
• Authenticate the insurance reimbursements.
• Place orders and purchase crucial office & clinical supplies as and when needed.
• Supervise and examine information about the events, materials or the surroundings, in order to sense or review the underlying issues.
• Identifying the basic principles, causes or actuality of information by splitting down the data or information into several different parts.
• Record and document the information: Writing, recording, documenting, maintaining and updating essential information in written form or in magnetic/electronic form.
• Sort out, arrange and prioritize tasks: Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize and accomplish the assigned work.
• Information processing: Gather, regulate, classify, compute, tabularize, review or verify all data or information.

These are some of the clerical responsibilities that a medical assistant intern would learn and do as well. In the present day, a number of health care setting and private clinics have started to carry out most of these clerical tasks predominately via internet. For that reason, a medical assistant intern is expected to possess reasonable computer skills. He/she should be technically advanced and ‘up-to-date’ at all times. He/she should  apply innovative knowledge on his/her job.

Medical Job Description

It is very important for a medical assistant intern to get trained in the medical tasks of a health care setting as it is crucial when he steps into the real job as a medical assistant. All through the internship program, an intern is supervised by a professional health care employee at all times. This is to make sure that the patients are getting appropriate care and whether the intern candidate is performing his training and work in an appropriate manner. Thus, a medical assistant intern would be trained to do the following medical tasks:

• Preparing patients for their health examinations is a substantial medical duty of a medical assistant intern.
• He/she should help patients to reach their physical (medical) examination rooms. As a next step, he/she should receive and log the vital signs (such as, body temperature, blood pressure, height, body weight, past medical history) of the patients. Subsequently, the intern should explain the following procedure to the patients and set up the required medical equipments for the doctor to arrive and check.
• Caring and helping others: As a medical assistant intern, he/she would provide medical attention, personal help, emotional help, other individual care and treatment to all people including  the patients, the coworkers and the clients
• Gather medical and health information: An intern would watch the vital signs of the patients carefully, receive and greet them or else obtain information from all appropriate sources to help treat the patients in a better way.
• Identify actions, happenings and objects conscientiously: Identify information through classification, estimation, recognition of differences and similarities. In addition, an intern would detect the changes in situations or proceedings with awareness.
• Assessing the qualities of services, things and people: A medical assistant intern would be trained to assess the significance, value and quality of all populace, things and services.
• Work with the public directly: Ways to work and perform for the public and dealing with the public directly. This may include serving patients and receiving the patients, guests or other clients.

Lab Tasks

• Collect and handle various samples taken from patients like blood, urine etc for pathological tests.
• Govern injectable medicines to the patients.

These are some of the laboratory duties a medical assistant intern would learn to do. He/she will be trained be given hands-on training in order to become skilled at the specimen-storing methods and appropriate handling of things. In the main, a clinical laboratory professional will train the medical assistant intern.

Other roles of a medical assistant intern

Tidy up, stockpile and re-fill supplies: One more task that an intern would learn to do in internship program is the right way of sorting and organizing the clinical laboratory materials as well as the  health check examination rooms. An intern would be taught to inspect the medical tools, check the structure of the equipments or other materials in order to spot out the sources of inaccuracies, faults or any other defects or problems.

So as to run and function a medical office, hospital or clinic in a smooth and effective manner, the patient (physical) examination rooms and clinical laboratory should be maintained in a neat manner. Both areas should to be completely stockpiled with essential medical supplies, equipments, tools and instruments so that any medical procedure ordered by the physician (or doctor) is carried out precisely without any delay. A medical assistant intern would learn about the essential medical tools and equipments that are looked-for in each area. He would be given the right instructions to tidy up the medical examination rooms in between the patient visits. The training for cleaning and stocking are given based on the rules, regulations and medical values & principles of the government.