Tag Archives: medical secretary courses

How To Earn A Higher Salary As A Medical Secretary?

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So you’ve achieved your goal of working as a medical secretary and you’re earning a decent wage. Now you’re ready to start working towards advancement. You could be earning more than you are. Read below for some tips on how to get ahead.

GET ACCREDITED

If you don’t already have accreditation, you should get it. With formal proof of your skills, you will be in a much better position to demand a higher wage. Evening and weekend courses will allow you to work and study at the same time. There are also an increasing number of online options, which will save you the time and expense of commuting to a campus.

GET (A VARIETY OF) EXPERIENCE

Don’t feel obliged to stay with your current employer. You may be comfortable where you are, but after a few years you’ll have learned everything you can from that job. Moving on to another office will give you the opportunity to learn new skills, since every employer does things a little differently. And with a letter of recommendation from your old boss, you’ll be able to look for something that pays a bit more, too.

JOIN PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Professional Associations, like the American Society of Administrative Professionals (ASAP), offer opportunities to find new jobs, network with other professionals in your field, and participate in lifelong career training. Often what’s taught through the local branch of your association will be more immediately relevant to you than the general topics covered in post-secondary institutions. Additionally, professional associations almost always have volunteer positions that will make your resume look very impressive.

JOIN A UNION

Unions take all the work out of negotiating for a higher wage and better benefits. If you hear about a union forming in your field, consider supporting it. There are pros and cons to unionizing, of course. Unions may collect dues and require that their members purchase licenses to work, but the pros of unionizing usually outweigh the cons.

DO A GOOD JOB

Sometimes we get so caught up in achieving our future advancement goals that we forget to pay attention to our present performance. Your first priority should be to make sure that you’re doing the best job that you can do, every day. Any effort that you put into additional training or networking should come second.

ASK FOR A RAISE

This one may seem like it’s too obvious to mention, but often people seem to think that it’s somehow rude to ask for more money for doing the same job. But the fact is, the more experience you have in your field, the more valuable you are as a worker. If, after a year or more of consistently performing well, your boss doesn’t think that you’ve proven yourself to be a more reliable (and therefore more valuable) worker than some new hire, then that may be just the cue you need to start looking for a new position.

We all need goals to work towards if we don’t want to wind up in a rut. Set your sights high, and keep working towards your dream salary. You have opportunities all around you to advance, so grab one of them and achieve your career goals!

Eight Medical Secretary Courses You Should Take

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If you can’t afford to spend two years completing a comprehensive medical secretary program, then you’re going to need a way to choose those courses that will do you the most good. So, what training courses are the most relevant to a medical secretary? Here is a list of the top eight.

1. MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

Even if you already have some skills as a secretary, working as a medical secretary requires that you be able to understand medical language. In a doctor’s office, patients will tell you what’s wrong with them, and you will need to be able to understand what they’re saying so that you can pass the information on to the doctor.

2. ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES

A course in administrative procedures is important since you will obviously be doing quite a bit of administrative work, such as organizing medical records, booking appointments, and processing insurance papers. This will represent the bulk of your responsibilities as a medical secretary.

3. PHARMACOLOGY

It is useful to understand the words for a variety of medications. This is similar to the medical terminology course. Doctors will give you information about patient prescription to pass on to patients, and you will need to know how to pronounce the words, or your phone messages will be incomprehensible.

4. ANATOMY

More and more vocabulary. As a medical secretary, you need to know the words for a great many structures in the human body. Medical secretaries are expected to be able to read and understand patient charts, which are guaranteed to be littered with anatomical terms.

5. RECORD KEEPING

This course is all about how to keep files organized. Have you ever seen the huge wall of files behind the desk of the average medical secretary? Ever wonder how a medical receptionist is able to pull your file down from that mountain in just a few seconds? It’s all about organization. A well-run office must be very well organized.

6. TRANSCRIPTION

Some doctors record their voice instead of writing down notes, in which case you may be called upon to transcribe those recordings into digital form. If it turns out that you have a special talent for medical transcription, you could even turn it into an alternate career path, increasing your financial security.

7. ACCOUNTING

You may be responsible for tracking expenditures and income for a small clinic. An accounting course will give you the skills and confidence you need to make sure not a penny goes missing.

8. INSURANCE PROCESSING

Even countries that have universal healthcare have insurance plans, and getting money out of an insurance company is rarely easy. You will need to know what procedures to follow to make a claim, and how to appeal the inevitable claim rejections. This is another one of those skills that can be made into a career all its own. Having a variety of marketable skills will allow you to feel safer and more secure in the job market.

With these medical secretary courses under your belt, you will go far in your career.