MATH

AND

HEALT

HCARE

PROFESS

ION A

S A

MED

ICAL

ASSIS

TANT

MM

150 -13

Konette

Davis

9-17-2

010

A MEDICAL ASSISTANT ‘S CAREER

A medical assistant’s flexibility in work is highly valued since they are the ones in charge in performing the day to day activities to assist the patient and the doctors as well.

Prior to the doctor’s check up, preliminary data should be collected first by the medical assistant. These information usually involves the height and mass of the patient.

Usually height and mass are used to determined the BODY MASS INDEX, an important tool in determining the patient’s health condition: whether a person is underweight, overweight or normal. From this, certain assessments on health conditions can be known (eg. Diabetes, high blood, etc)

Consider this, suppose I am working in a hospital where a lot patients are coming in for a check up. Before taking each patient to the doctor I should get their BMI first.

To make sure that I am doing things right, I should be knowledgeable enough on these fields:

Metric System – I should know the appropriate units otherwise I might be fired for saying that the patient has a height of 564 meters and mass of 3740 kg.

Accuracy – my measurements should be as accurate as possible since I am dealing with BMI.

The BMI formula

Simple isn’t it?

Check the BMI chart:

Based on the chart, the patient

is underweight

Patient’s data:

Height: 1.75 meters Weight: 56 kilograms Steps in computing BMI;

(1) Multiply the height by itself:

height x height = 1.75 x 1.75 = 3.0625

(2) Divide the weight by the previous product:

weight/(height x height) = 56 / (3.0625) = 18.28

So what does a BMI of 18.28 means? Underweight = <18.5Normal weight = 18.5–24.9 Overweight = 25–29.9 Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

MY REFERENCES

What Health. (2010) The BMI Formula. Retrieved on September 6, 2010. Available at: http://www.whathealth.com/

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Calculating BMI. Retrieved on Sept 6, 2010. Available at: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/bmi-m.htm