The Medical Admin Assistant (HR solution to nurses’ shortage)

Shortage of nurses is not a local problem in the Healthcare system in Egypt. Nearly most of countries have such a problem. In a survey it was clear that nurses spend about 60 to 70% of their working hours in administrative work. Hence the job of the medical secretary or medical admin assistant was created. This job spares the nurses much time for their technical work.

The medical secretary is responsible for keeping files, writing reports, arranging time schedules for doctors, dispensing drugs from the pharmacy and running the doctors office and the head of the department. They may stay at the nurses’ station in the clinical departments or in a small room where files are kept.

The job description of the medical admin assistant is:

1-    Keeping files of the patient.

2-    Taking the administrative instruction of the head of the department and doctors about non-medical instructions for the patient as type of food, visits permission.

3-    Receiving requests from other clinical departments

4-    Contacting other clinical departments to arrange laboratory, X-ray, physiotherapy and other services for the patient upon the request from doctors and telling the nurse about the specific instructions of these departments to prepare the patient for the needed test or service

5-    Writing medical reports and keeping copies in patients’ files

6-    Dispensing drugs from the internal pharmacy according to the doctors’ instructions and handling them to nurses to dispense them to patients

7-    Preparing the time table for the on-duty doctors

8-    Preparing the weekly clinical seminar and doing the power point slides for it

9-    Helping doctors in their preparing power point shows for their meetings and conferences

10-                       Purchase of stationary and other direct purchases for the department

The job specifications are:

1-    Newly university graduate or high school graduate

2-    Able to communicate with doctors, nurses and patients

3-    Intermediate level of English language

4-    Computer literate (windows, word and power point)

5-    Able to work under stress

Training needed for the job as pre-employment training

1-    Course of English for medical professions

2-    Soft skills

3-    Introduction to management

4-    Office management

5-    Simple finance rules

6-    Psychology of patients and of medical professions

The career of the job will be devised as

1-    Medical assistant admin

2-    Medical admin – after 2 – 3 years

3-    Medical admin supervisor after 5 years – supervising the medical admin(s) in several departments

4-    Admin in non medical departments after internal and external training courses

This job spares the nurses much time so that the hospital will need fewer nurses that should be qualified from nursing schools and collages and there is a shortage of them. At the same time it creates new jobs in the health sector. The training of this job is easy and can be conducted internally in big hospitals or in training institutes.