Medical Assistants Working Within Their Scope

Medical Assistant Scope of Practice

In conjunction with their professional responsibilities all medical assistants must realize that they are subject to certain limitations within their scope of practice. These standards of practice are based on the quality and amount of their education, training, experience, local regulations, and guidelines regulating the medical assistant. The responsible individual will recognize, accept, and demand that these limitations are respected and strictly adhered to where ever they work.

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To Act Within The Scope:

"An act is within the scope of employment if it is incidental to the employer's business and is done to further the employer's interest. If an employee departs so far from his duties that his acts are no longer for his employer's benefit, then his acts are not within the scope of his employment. However, if the tortuous act of the employee arose out of an activity which was within the employee's scope of employment or within the ordinary course of business, then that act may be considered to be within the scope of employment."

Performed under the direct supervision of the medical doctor or other licensed healthcare provider the medical assistant can:

• Prepare and file medical records and patient charts
• Maintain medical records using numeric or alphabetic systems
• Data collection to be used by licensed professionals 
• Inventory control and ordering supplies
• Maintain office equipment
• Manage an account for petty cash
• Post service charges and payments
• Gather community resources
• Prepare and maintain appointment books
• Sterilize and wrap instruments
• Prepare the examination room
• Record body measurements and vital signs
• Assist with the physical examinations
• Assist with therapeutic procedures
• Assist  in the handling of equipment in preparation for procedures 
• Collect and preserve specimens (blood, urine, sputum, wound scrapings, throat cultures, etc.)
• Perform simple STAT laboratory tests on collected specimens
• Accept telephone calls and relay patient's requests and questions
• Provide health maintenance education not related to a specific diagnosis 
• Patient teaching, e.g. demonstrate how to use an inhaler
• Provide patient education to supplement the doctor's orders
• Compose dictated or preformatted business correspondence
• Transcribe dictated documents
• Respond to medical office emergencies and provide basic first aid

American Medical Technologists (AMT) maintains a list of the RMA Lawful Scope of Practice - PDF - Published in AMT Events March 2003 - and a MA Task List that includes various tasks that medical assistants may perform.

Disclaimer:
The above is not an exclusive itemization of the technical supportive services a medical assistant can or cannot perform. Medical assistants must ALWAYS adhere to state and local laws and regulations! As an integral part of the allied healthcare team medical assistants must demonstrate practice consistent with legal standards and state regulations that may apply. Since all fifty (50) states vary in their regulations as to the definition, training standards and scope of practice of the medical assistant, specific state requirements for practice must be identified and met by the concerned individual within the state they work!

Nationally recognized credentialing bodies for medical assistants, however, may further define and regulate the role of the medical assistant. Medical assistants working in a medical office setting must adhere to the rules, regulations and requirements mandated by their state in which they practice as well as those imposed by their credentialing body/certification association.