FlightWay / Careers / Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

Healthcare

Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

Perform secretarial duties using specific knowledge of medical terminology and hospital, clinic, or laboratory procedures.

Sector: Healthcare
Preparation: Zone 2 — some preparation needed
O*NET code: 43-6013.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Working with Computers

central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.
Processing Information

a major part of the work — rated 84/100 for importance.
Performing for or Working Directly with the Public

a major part of the work — rated 82/100 for importance.
Getting Information

a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
Performing Administrative Activities

a major part of the work — rated 78/100 for importance.

Perform secretarial duties using specific knowledge of medical terminology and hospital, clinic, or laboratory procedures. Duties may include scheduling appointments, billing patients, and compiling and recording medical charts, reports, and correspondence.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (52/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Service Orientation

Needed at a solid working level (46/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
Reading Comprehension

Needed at a basic working level (45/100), and rated 63/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a basic working level (43/100), and rated 53/100 for importance.

Knowledge

Customer and Personal Service

Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 86/100 for importance.
English Language

Needed at a solid working level (53/100), and rated 82/100 for importance.
Administrative

Needed at a high level (64/100), and rated 73/100 for importance.
Medicine and Dentistry

Needed at a solid working level (46/100), and rated 65/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (50/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Speech Recognition

Needed at a basic working level (45/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 2 — some preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A high-school diploma is the usual starting point.

Experience

Some prior work experience helps but is rarely required.

Training

Expect a few months to a year of on-the-job training.

What it pays

These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Mayo Clinic · Johns Hopkins

$130k – $300k

Regional Health Systems

$100k – $180k

Clinics & Private Practice

$80k – $130k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
You are in front of the public, so the job is partly performance.From “Performing for or Working Directly with the Public”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

More in Healthcare

See every Healthcare career →

See your fit for Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants

Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

Take the quiz Open in FlightWay

Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.