Medical ScribePrograms forPremeds: Are they Really a Good Option to Consider?
Medical scribes offer valuable, but often unsung services to the healthcare industry, which ends up undermining the importance which this humble profession holds. For aspiring medical students, in particular, the experience and training that a medical scribe training program may provide, can be quite an advantage to have on their side.
Royalty Free Photo
To help students get a more clear cut conception of why pre meds and medical scriptinggo so well together, the following points should be taken into account.
More than an Introduction: Testing the Waters
Medical scribes are paid decently in respect to their qualifications and average age, but it’s not the pay that makes the profession so relevant for aspiring med students. More importantly than anything else, it serves a few very specific, future oriented purposes, which can be categorized as below:
- Observing, learning and realizing whether a medical career is the right path to take for the young student
- Training and preparing for their future career in the same environment
- Building important connections for the future, in the field of healthcare in general
- Chances of getting medical scholarship opportunities by working in the right healthcare facilities
Saving Up for Med School
As mentioned previously, the pay is not anything to rely on for the long term, but it still can be quite substantial for a student. The diligent ones will often start saving most of it to pay at least a portion of their med school expenses.
This would go a long way towards reducing the size of education loans, and especially so, if they can also secure a scholarship in the process.
Training in EHR
A quality medical scribe program will ensure that students are placed in the best facilities. In fact, a large factor in determining the quality of the institution is how well they train their students in electronic health record (EHR) keeping.
Not only is EHR documentation an essential skill to pick up for a medical scribe, but the training can also open doors to a more prospective career as an EHR professional. Their proficiency with the health record keeping codes can pretty much be instrumental in determining their value and salary in a healthcare facility.
Mentorship
The road to becoming a fully licensed doctor is a long one and mentorships are crucial for both determining future career prospects, as well as the best training during residency. Given that a medical scribe works closely with the most important figures in medicine, it’s a very prominent opportunity to find a mentor for both now and the future.
It would be fair to call medical scribe training a gateway into their future for premeds. There are other courses that can offer similar opportunities for getting that all important clinical experience as well, but very few of them come with EHR training, which in itself opens up more advanced career opportunities in the field of indirect medical care, even if the student decides not to go to medical school.