Wages of a Clinical Medical Assistant
The clinical medical assistant is the medical assistant this responsible for interacting directly and physically with the patients. If you have ever been to a general practice doctors office, it is the clinical medical assistant that brings you to your specific waiting room and takes your temperature and other vital signs. This is the one medical assistant that interacts more with the patients than any other. They spend time with the patient in the examination room, they discuss and help clarify symptoms, and they make certain the patient is prepared to see the physician.
This means that it is the clinical medical assistant that is responsible for having the patient remove clothing or even get into a hospital gown if necessary. If you plan to be a clinical medical assistant you must be comfortable in working in close proximity with people that are clothed or not clothed and in communicating directly with patients that are oftentimes sick.
The clinical assistant is also expected to do other clinical activities such as record a patients medical history, perform injections, take EKG’s, work with the laboratory, take blood, peform x-ray’s, and even start IV’s.
The clinical medical assistant can expect a salary that is dependent upon their work experience as well as the area of practice that they work within. The clinical medical assistant salary for the new employee that works within a normal physicians outpatient office you can expect to start around $13 per hour. That salary average increases yearly and moves upwards of $17 plus per hour after 16+ years of experience.
The clinical medical assistant’s salary, if they are working in an emergency care or within a department in an actual hospital, can expect to start at around $14.50 per hour. While they start higher on average than the general practice clinical medical assistant they top out around $17.50 per hour, just slightly higher than the general practice clinical medical assistant. In the long run it depends on the specific work environment that you want. Small office or large hospital? Each has it advantages and disadvantages and the choice is dependent upon your particular personality and goals.
The one thing that needs to be included in the discussion of the clinical medical assistant’s salary is the benefits that they receive. After all, benefits are an important part of overall salary. Almost 90% of the full time clinical medical assistants receive benefits from the offices or hospitals they work within. For medical assistant educators this percentage increases to over 94%. The specific benefits that each employer offers ranges from major medical all the way through personal liability insurance. It is important for a clinical medical assistant to consider having personal liability insurance coverage in order to shelter the assistant from any lawsuits that could target them whether through negligence, oversight, or perceived negligence. The larger hospitals were found to be more likely to offer the largest range of medical coverage to their medical assistant staff.
The highest paid clinical medical assistants were those that worked in specialty medical practices. But the overall pay difference between the different types of environment was negligible. If you are planning to be a clinical medical assistant you should know that the survey found that the difference in pay is very little so you are best of picking the work environment you will enjoy most.
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