Doctors' present evaluation on medical assistant clerk and secretaries future duties

Abstract

It has been 6 years since 43 medical assistant clerks had been introduced to 23 medical departments in our hospital. Thereafter, two problems were revealed. One is that we are not able to grasp the medical assistant clerks' real abilities clearly；the other is that it is uncertain if doctors are demanding the medical assistant clerks' additional assistance. Therefore, we performed a questionnaire survey on both the doctors and medical assistant clerks in order to investigate whether present education system is working well and effectively on lightening doctors' workload and to examine the details of medical assistant clerks' duties for the future.

Overall, as a result, medical assistant clerks received a high evaluation for their present outpatient work and the result also indicated the possibility of expanding their activities in the future. Moreover, we also carried out a comparative study of the medical assistant clerks' accuracy on their work by comparing final documents made by the doctors and the medical assistant clerks. The work rated more than 80 % “accurate” are as follows：consultation reservation order and output of examination results (85%), output of reservation document (82%), data organization (74%), input of medical record at re-visit (72%) and input of medical record at the first visit (67%). Furthermore, the secretarial work gained a favorable result：careful consideration for doctors' smooth consultation (81%) and appropriate reservation arrangement (67%). Additional duties which doctors think the medical assistant clerks can cover include more advanced medical knowledge, consequently, we need to increase knowledge and improve our skills.