5 Important Skills You Can Learn From Being a Medical ScribePosted by Hovmand Irwin on August 4th, 2021 
A medical scribe is a new and innovative concept of modern medicine. Traditionally, healthcare providers would focus on providing personal contact and care to their patients. But, as health records have started to be collected and saved electronically, the amount of documentation and administrative responsibilities is overwhelming physicians and providers, drawing them away from patient care. That’s where medical scribes come in handy.
Being a scribe can be a difficult job. It is demanding work that needs extensive knowledge and training of hundreds if not thousands of medical terms. However, there is much more to learn from Medical scribe training than just medical terminology. Here are some lifelong skills you can learn from being a Medical scribe:
1. Learning a Great Amount of Information in a Short Amount of Time
During Medical scribe certification online, you must learn a good amount of medical terminology, anatomy, abbreviations, and pharmacology to keep up with a medical provider who has likely been practicing for more than a decade. Understanding this information and applying it properly is a skill that must be mastered to succeed as a scribe. The training you get as a scribe will surely benefit those heading to medical school, but it can also help those joining the workforce who will need to learn on the job.
2. Building Professional Relationships
It is easy to make friends at work, mainly if you are a lifeguard or are scooping ice cream. However, as a medical scribe, your focus is on providing high-quality documentation and improving the workflow of a provider who is your mentor, superior, and someone you respect. This enables you to practice building professional contacts with much older and more experienced people than you are.
Scribing is also an excellent way to network and find connections to new possibilities within and outside healthcare. Serving your team well will usually lead to physicians or medical directors writing letters of recommendation for medical school or whatever your plans may be.
3. Being Flexible to New Situations
As a scribe, you must correctly describe the problematic situations that land patients in the ED. You also have to remember each provider’s charting preference and continually adjust every situation to their specific charting style. A successful medical scribe is always assuming the provider’s next move.
In other industries, co-workers would never spend a 12-hour shift less than 3 feet from one another, but having this distance is essential to achieving effective scribe-provider communication as a scribe. If you have the flexibility to go with the ED flow and can make it as a scribe without irritating a provider during a busy cemetery shift, you are likely a great person to share a cubicle with. You must also be in tune with their current stress level and mood during the change and adjust your behavior, respectively.
4. Learning About the Healthcare Industry as a Whole
One of the many benefits of getting a Medical scribe certification is experiencing medicine past your Organic Chemistry textbook pages. The business of healthcare is not something often discussed in undergraduate courses, but as a scribe, you will see first-hand the importance of facility metrics, EMRs, billing, coding, payment systems, and more.
Seeing the business side of healthcare might help you consider a job in something outside of the direct care of patients like hospital administration. Even hospitals need IT specialists, accountants, interior designers, and maintenance technicians. The experience that scribing can bring could help you if you decide to change careers.
5. Thinking Like a Doctor
Outsiders might view the ED as a rolling door of excitement, but as an experienced scribe, you learn lots of protocols in place that make it “organized chaos.” As a scribe, you will observe the medical decision-making that doctors think through as they treat something as complex as gunshot victims and as routine as strep throat. A
medical scribe training has the unique fly-on-the-wall chance to witness the human art of medicine. This will lead you to be a more knowledgeable patient and better advocate for your family’s health.
I am sure that the scribe experience will benefit you both personally and professionally.
Being a quick learner who can adjust to a new work environment and get along with others is something every organization looks for, so you will be well ahead of your competition using these skills. In addition, you will learn more about your health and the healthcare industry as a whole. After all, we will all ultimately be on the other side of the laptop.
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