The Medical Assistant profession is dynamic, fast-paced, and essential to an efficient healthcare team. To do your job effectively, you'll need a solid foundation of technical and professional skills to be a Medical Assistant. Check out these 6 skills you need as a medical assistant!

1. Patient Care Techniques

As a medical assistant, the primary focus of your career is your patient. That's why clinical skills are invaluable to the profession. You'll need to know how to take patient histories and perform medical procedures like vitals, blood draws, injections, lab procedures, and EKGs. There are also a lot of rules to consider about proper patient care, safety, sanitation, and a patient's right to privacy. You'll need to know the rules of the profession, how to follow them, and how to provide your patients with the best care you can.

2. Communication Skills

Strong communication often ranks at the top of the list for what employers look for when hiring, but it's even more essential when you are a Medical Assistant. Throughout your day, you might need to communicate with patients, their families, physicians, nurses, vendors, or insurance companies. You'll need to listen, understand, and be able to accurately relay information to the appropriate people. Listening skills are especially important when getting feedback from patients or receiving instructions from members of your healthcare team.

3. Customer Service

Your patients are your customers, so if you've ever worked in food service or retail, you might have a head start on how to provide great care. Being personable, upbeat, and positive can go a long way as a medical assistant. Help care for patients in a kind and compassionate way. When interacting with patients that are in pain or distress, you should act in a calm, reassuring manner that is best for the patient.

4. Medical Terminology Knowledge

The medical profession has a language all its own. You need a basic knowledge of human anatomy, as well as an understanding of medical and pharmacological vocabulary. There are acronyms like HIPAA and COBRA that you might not know now, but you'll learn. And terms like "hypo" and "hyper" that start lots of medical words and you probably didn't even realize that they're opposites. There are also codes for diagnoses, treatments, and procedures. All of it will become second-nature to you.

5. Organizational Skills

Whether you're keeping office areas and exam rooms clean or patient information and medical records tidy, you'll rely on your organizational skills every day as a medical assistant. Staying organized is essential to providing a good patient experience and preventing mistakes.

6. Attention to Detail

Members of a medical team rely on each other to deliver accurate records and notes when providing care for patients. Medical assistants need to be precise when taking vital signs or recording patient information. If required, they also need to be sure to accurately code a patient's medical records for billing purposes.

Think you would make a great medical assistant? At YTI Career Institute in York, Pennsylvania, we can teach you all you need to know to succeed in this rewarding career. YTI's Medical Assistant program combines qualified instruction with the medical facilities, equipment, and instruments you'd find on your first day of work. A 10-week externship in actual medical facilities will prepare you with the on-the-job skills you'll need as an important part of any medical team. Visit our Medical Assistant program page to learn more about our program and to apply!