When you’re preparing for a career, you want to collect as much relevant experience as possible in order to position yourself for future success. For students looking to pursue a future in medicine, collecting experience is not only helpful, it’s essential. For most career paths under the medicine umbrella, students will be required to complete, and excel in, a variety of postgraduate programs. Whether for medical school, nursing school, or an NP or PA program, the application requirements that a student needs to be admitted will require, among other things, relevant clinical experience.
Students who are committed to a career in medicine, or are considering one, are encouraged to volunteer in clinical environments to allow themselves to be exposed to hands-on work within the world of medicine. One way for them to receive a first-hand level of clinical experience is by serving as a medical scribe.
What do Medical Scribes Do?
Medical scribes serve a valuable role in a clinical setting, as they are tasked with recording all of the information that a medical provider receives during a patient encounter. In a sense, a medical scribe is like a personal assistant for a medical provider. The types of information that scribe will record for the medical provider includes family history, symptoms, medical history, and medical data such as blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
The primary goal for a medical scribe is to help improve the overall experience for both the provider and the patient. By relieving the provider of documenting their encounter with a patient, the provider can be more productive as they’re focusing all of their attention on their patients. For patients, it can be unsettling to be talking to a provider when they’re rapidly jotting down notes and not looking at the patient. With a scribe handling the note taking and charting, a patient can feel the comfort of having their provider’s full attention.
Benefits of Being a Medical Scribe
There are a number of awesome and rewarding benefits that come with working as a medical scribe. To provide with you a preview into the value of working as a medical scribe, here are 4 of those benefits explained in greater detail.
1. Clinical Learning Environment
For students considering a career in medicine, working as a medical scribe is not your average college job. It’s a job that uniquely provides students with experience and exposure that will help them throughout their journey towards their desired career. One of the great benefits that students receive in working as a medical scribe is the clinical environment they’ll be working in, and all of the learning they’ll experience there. Each day will present medical scribes with new challenges in the clinic that expose them to new disciplines of medicine.
Working in a clinical learning environment helps students in a variety of ways. The information that a medical scribe learns helps them in the undergraduate course work, postgraduate testing, future interviews, as well as exposing students to specific disciplines that they may want to pursue in greater detail in the future.
2. Working with a Variety of Providers
Medical scribes get the beneficial opportunity of working with a variety of medical providers. Typically, each shift will see a medical scribe working with a different provider. Not only does that mean that medical scribes will be able to observe and assist a number of different physicians at work, it means that one day a scribe might accompany an M.D. on patient rounds, the next they may be following a nurse practitioner, and week later they could be assisting a physician assistant.
Being able to work with different providers, and providers who serve different roles, allows a medical scribe to be exposed to numerous careers that are available in medicine.
It’s common for a medical scribe to begin employment with the goal of eventually becoming a nurse practitioner, and after working for a year or so as a medical scribe, they change their career plans and decide that they want to attend medical school and become an M.D. Or, they’ll begin employment hoping to one day be a M.D. only to end up applying to program that will certify them to work as a physician assistant.
3. Learn How Healthcare Teams Work Together
Serving as a medical scribe provides you with a great experience of how healthcare teams work and collaborate together within a clinical setting. Medical scribes will be tasked with other duties in addition to their documenting responsibilities. They’ll help with clinical workflow, upload and retrieve medical charts, order and organize lab results for providers, assist in admitting and discharging patients, and a host of other secondary duties.
All of these tasks provide medical scribes with different glimpses of how healthcare teams work together to care for their patients.
4. Professional Mentoring
Working as a medical scribe provides students with an outstanding network for professional mentoring. Each time a scribe is assigned to a medical provider the scribe is paired with a potential mentor. The medical providers that scribes are assisting have gone through the long and challenging journey to reach their career goals, and can provide valuable guidance to scribes who are embarking on their career path.
In addition to getting mentored by medical providers, scribes can often receive mentorship from the organizations that employ them. When you work as a scribe for an organization like EPPA, you’re joining a team that is committed to helping you achieve your future goals. To do so, medical scribes receive a number of valuable resources including professional mentoring, application workshops, monthly education sessions, and more.
Apply to be a Medical Scribe with Eppa Today
Are you curious to learn more about becoming a medical scribe? Learn more about the medical scribe position and current openings we have at EPPA. You’ll enjoy all of the benefits of working as a medical scribe including:
- Learning valuable medical knowledge in a clinical environment
- Work with a variety of medical providers
- Learn how healthcare teams work together.
- Receive professional mentoring and resource to help you on your career journey.
If you’re looking to build valuable experience on your journey to working in medicine, becoming a medical scribe with EPPA will help you gain the hands on knowledge you need and set you apart from your peers. Join us today!