If you are considering taking up a career in the medical field, there’s a big chance you’re weighing your options on the path to take. You could become a physician, a surgeon, a nurse, and everything in between. All this might depend on a mix of different factors, including your academic background, passion, and sometimes your experience as well as the soft skills you possess.
And if you’ve ever thought of working as a medical assistant, whether or not you are successful in your career could be determined by the skills you possess beyond your medical training background.
Read on to find out exactly what soft skills you need to excel as a medical assistant.
Who is a Medical Assistant and What Does the Job Involve?
Simply put, a medical professional is a healthcare worker whose job occasionally switches from clinical tasks to administrative tasks.
These healthcare professionals are instrumental in the everyday running of health facilities because they play a role in literally all the stages of patient care, from admission to treatment and discharge.
The job entails interacting with physicians, patients, and other healthcare professionals on a daily basis.
It also means that besides a medical assistant diploma, certification, and on-the-job training becoming a successful medical assistant requires you to have a certain set of people skills, also known as soft, or interpersonal skills.
5 Soft Skills Needed To Succeed As a Medical Assistant
As already established, interpersonal skills are somewhat a silver bullet to attaining success and satisfaction as a medical assistant. Based on the nature of the job, some of the soft skills you might need to excel in this career include the following:
1. Empathy
There are numerous situations where an empathizing person can help a patient, their loved ones, or even a physician. Since your job as a medical assistant requires you to be empathetic and patient-focused in every step of the process, there is a huge chance you’ll need to understand empathy, develop the skill, and practice it more often.
Empathy could go a long way in helping a patient recover faster as it eases anxiety and gives them hope to know that someone understands how they feel.
2. Attention to Detail
In case you didn’t know, being detail-oriented is a soft skill, one that a medical assistant can’t afford to lack if they want to be successful in their career. If you have a high level of attention to detail, you are less likely to make mistakes when carrying out your clinical or administrative duties.
3. Active Listening
Your job as a clinical assistant will probably involve interacting with patients on a daily basis. More often than not, patients will come to you with tons of different symptoms, some of which you might miss if you’re not keen on listening to them.
Besides helping prevent and reduce medical errors in healthcare facilities, listening actively can also help build trust with your patients in the process of seeking the best treatment or healthcare solution for them.
4. Strong Study Skills (The Right Training Program Will Help)
You need to be able to learn new techniques quickly if you want to be successful at your medical assistant job. Good trainers are a blessing in disguise because they can help you learn new skills.
This is why it pays to enrol in a reputable medical assistant program in the first place. Besides helping you to develop the soft skills you need in the job, a good clinical assistant program will also provide you with a wealth of resources that you might need to improve and perfect your skills, both hard and soft.
5. Teamwork
Another vital soft skill to possess if you want to excel in the medical assistant career is teamwork. This is because, from the point of appointment or admission to the point when a patient is discharged, different healthcare professionals (with different roles) are involved in the process.
In any healthcare facility, you will be working in tandem with other healthcare professionals, some of who will be your superiors or subordinates.
Being a team player is a crucial soft skill because it lets you communicate well with others. It also opens up opportunities to learn new skills and improve your performance.
The above are just a few of the crucial soft skills you may need to become successful as a medical assistant. On top of these, don’t forget to observe work ethic and professionalism. It might turn out to be what sets you apart from the rest in the industry or your healthcare facility.