A Narrative Essay in Medical Assistant The first section of the following essay will explain the communication skills such as having a great attitude, being able to understand the patient and physician; and also how to relate what the doctor has diagnose to the patient will help me become a great medical assistant. The next section will explain why conflict resolution is important in my career field. The last section will describe a conflict and how I resolved it; and also how I would change the way I handled it.

The following communication skills are important in my career field. Having a great attitude is a plus as a medical assistant because this field is a customer service field, and when you make the clients feel welcomed, it makes their visit more pleasant regardless of what their there for. Being able to understand what the physician has ordered me to do is very important. If I don’t understand I would need to ask the doctor to go further in detail, ask someone else or even look for more information on it.

In my career field, I have to be able to understand or try my best to understand what the patients are trying to tell me would help also. Sometimes people feel embarrassed or even scared to tell what is really wrong with them and in some cases some don’t know how to explain. It’s my job to look at body language and try and fill in the blanks if they are having difficulty with it. With that, being a good listener would be a good communication skill. You have to be able to listen to fully understand what is going on.

Williams and Laungani (1990), describes that Adorian believes “that multidisciplinary teamwork has also led to better detection, treatment, follow-up and outcomes for a variety of patient conditions such as hypertension” (p. 2). The same explanation applies to working in teams as a medical assistant. Working in teams will help provide patients with knowing they are getting the right medication and not the wrong one or someone else’s; and also that they are getting the proper care. That would lead to major problems such as becoming very ill or maybe even death if not caught soon enough.

Being able to work in teams as a medical assistant is helpful because in any situation I would need the assistance of my co-workers. Being able to break information down to where the patient or patients can understand is a wonderful skill to posses because I will be dealing with so many cultures, ethnicity, and age groups. A lot of people do not understand when doctors and even medical assistants use certain terms, so when they are spoken to where they can understand, it makes them feel better just knowing what is going on instead of feeling more confused than what they was when they came in.

And also it lets them know that you care enough to take the time and effort to make sure they understand. According to Engel (2000), Kamien explains that “the task of general practice should go well beyond simply dealing with a patient’s presenting complaint” (p. 4). The same explanation applies to adapting to change as a medical assistant in the sense that I should be able to listen and adapt to each patient’s needs that I come in contact with.

Being able to adapt to change is a plus because as a medical assistant I will be dealing with new equipment, new procedures, and different co-workers that might be able to show me better ways to treat the patient’s complaints. As a medical assistant, being able to adapt to change goes hand and hand. I would have to be able to adjust to the problems that each person comes in with. Conflict resolution is important in my career field because nobody need to be fighting and arguing anyway and especially in front of the patients.

Everybody that works together is adults in the sense that they need to act that way in the work environment. People should be able to talk to each other in a sensible manner that in the long run; nobody would not each other or don’t even like working with each other. And you especially wouldn’t want to have conflicts with your supervisor because that could end up with you losing that position or even the job all together. The only conflict that I remember is when I was working at my last command in the Navy.

This new group of pregnant females and some that was light limited duty, that is someone that cannot work at their regular duty station because of medical issues, came there in June or July of 2008 and thought that they could change the way that things was at work. Me and two other girls I worked with had already formed a little group together and were really close. We had already worked there since August the year before and one girl longer than that, so we knew what had to be done on a daily basis before we was able to get off.

Well this new group thought they could come and change things and we were not going to let it happen. They began to use this second class to try and either get us to do extra stuff or to get us in trouble, it finally worked once when me and the second class got into an argument. The first class took her side even though she was wrong but at the end she ended up apologizing for the incident. The second class, throughout the days to follow recognized that we had a routine and did everything that we needed to do without anybody telling us while the ones that was using her was sitting around doing nothing.

I ended up pulling her to the side and talking to her one on one, that’s when she apologized for what happened. The only thing I wished I did different is that I should have talked to her sooner and not let it escalate to the point it did. This paper discussed what communication skills that I thought would be important to me in my career field. With my field, you can never have enough skills because you have to be diverse with everything dealing with different people.

It also talked about why conflict resolution is important, what conflict I had and how I would do it differently. References Glenn Williams & Pittu Laungani (1990), Analysis of teamwork in an NHS community trust: an empirical study. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 13 (1), 1999. Retrieved fromCINAHL with Full Text Database. C. E. Engil (2000), Health Professions Education for Adapting to Change and for Participating in Managing Change. Education for Health, 13 (1), 37-43. Retrieved from CINAHL with Full Text Database.