If you like working in the medical world, but aren’t keen on treating patients, then you may want to consider being a medical secretary.
A medical secretary is an administrative assistant who is trained to deal with the needs of a medical practice and the responsibilities of ensuring that all of the administrative and clerical tasks associated with the smooth running of a private or small practice get taken care of quickly and efficiently.
From answering phone calls to handling correspondence, screening emails, preparing correspondence, making appointments, transcribing doctor’s dictation and even updating records and taking care of insurance information as well as updating patient’s records, it is part of the job description to make sure that the office runs smoothly and without a hitch.
It takes a certain kind of personality to deal with the pressures involved in running a doctor’s office. While small offices may not be that busy, a larger office can be quite hectic, with non-stop patients and a never-ending pile of paperwork to make the day’s fly by.
And then of course, you have to be able to handle the multitude of patients who will be coming into the office every day. Many of them will have questions. Others will need help with forms or in understanding the doctor’s directions (or handwriting!). Still others will need to be walked through the process of filling out their screening forms or in filling out their insurance information.
In addition to their skills with people, they must also be highly organized, because it is going to take a lot of planning and preparation to be able to manage all the myriad of things that most medical offices need to have done in an average day; from coordinating the doctor’s schedules to planning out future appointments, and sometimes doing personnel paperwork for other employees, the job is seemingly endless, and requires any number of standard administrative skills.
Skills such as word processing and being able to run standard office documents are usually a standard requirement, as is being able to manage a database, use spreadsheets, send out mass mailings, be able to recognize (and understand) medical terminology.
While in smaller offices a medical secretary may actually run the office and act as a sort of office manager, in large practices they may be personal secretaries to doctors or administrative officers and may have assignments more in line with standard secretarial work.
While there are no specific educational requirements for this position, most employers like to see at least an associate’s degree in office administration. While there are plenty of training programs available for secretarial training, there are also plenty of college and universities (including junior colleges, which are usually quite a bit less expensive) that offer courses specific to the secretary’s role in the medical field, including courses in medical transcription, medical coding and billing as well as insurance filing and primers in medical terminology to prepare the student for their work in the world of medicine.
The person who will take this sort of position will not only need to be organized and have great communication skills, they will also need to be able to work well under the direction of someone else (like a physician or a head nurse) and not be offended if orders are “brusque” due to a heavy patient load, and not be offended when patients get frustrated with billing problems or with missed appointments or changes in schedules.
It can be a challenging job, and one that never seems to have an end, but if you like administrative work and enjoy being involved in the medical fields, then becoming a medical secretary may be just the career that you are looking for.
