Medical Assistant Skills – Multitasking Shouldn’t Be One of Them

So you would think that as a student pursuing medical assistant certification, one of the most important skills you’d need to develop is multitasking.  After all a medical assistant is going to have to work in a very busy and sometimes unpredictable environment.  So being able to multitask is probably a good idea no?  Well, according to researcher Zhen Wang, there is absolutely no benefit to multitasking or doing several tasks at the same time.  While doing so may make us feel more productive, Wang’s studies showed the opposite was true and that multitasking almost always led to worse work outcomes.  For a medical assistant, there is not alot of room for goof ups.  Clifford Nass, a researcher at Stanford performed research that also confirmed the fact that people who multitask do not develop improved skills in the  areas of memory or information filtering.  You can read a good shakedown of both Wang and Nass’s research in this article at Lifehacker.com.  For those seeking medical assistant education, the old maxim Momma used to say is still the best advice: Do one thing and do it well.