Job Outlook for Medical Assistant Grads
For all the grim news on the current job market, the future is still bright for students who’ve chosen a career path as a medical assistant.
The American Association of Medical Assistants reported that there were approximately 417,000 medical assistant on the job in 2006 – and that figure has grown ever since. Better than 60 percent were in physicians’ offices. Some 12 percent were in hospitals and nearly 11 percent worked with chiropractors, podiatrists and other healthcare practitioners. Trained medical assistants are also found in outpatient care centers, laboratories, nursing care facilities and government agencies. In short, the demand is wide and diverse.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical assisting jobs are expected to increase 35 percent over their 2006 level, in just the next seven years. That’s considerably faster than most other career fields.
Physicians’ offices generally offer three basic types of medical assistant positions.
First are administrative positions, which concentrate on the many clerical and secretarial functions vital in any health care facility. These can include greeting patients and taking medical histories and insurance information as well as patient scheduling and relaying prescriptions to pharmacies.
Second, there are clinical positions. These focus on direct assistance with patient care: setting up examination rooms, preparing patients for exams or treatment, taking vital signs, performing basic laboratory tests and assisting with actual treatments and procedures.
The third and most common type of position includes a combination of both administrative and clinical duties. In fact, most medical assisting positions involve at least some of both work types; the proportion can vary widely from job to job.
A medical assistant job in any facility will have its own special requirements and procedures. It’s not expected that a newly-hired MA will be able to jump straight in. On-the-job training and familiarization are expected for any new hire.
How easy will it be to find a medical assisting position, once you’ve graduated? A quick search of job-hunting can turn up dozens of openings for people newly entering the field. Looking to the future, government studies cite several key factors predicting greater and greater demand for health care and health care professionals.
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