Clinical Coordinator

Clinics—whether veterinary, medical, dental, or research facilities—are busy places, populated both by their own personnel and by a steady flow of patients. That’s why they need Clinical Coordinators, who are the Managers – Traffic Cops of their workplace.

Clinical Coordinators are in charge of everyday personnel concerns. If you’re a Clinical Coordinator, you handle things like performance reviews and budget planning. You hire and fire employees, train new ones, and lead clinic meetings. And through it all, you act as a liaison between the Doctor, Office Manager, and everyone else who works in the clinic, so you need to have conflict management and communications skills that would impress a Politician.

The exact duties of your job can vary depending on the size of the clinic. In smaller clinics, it may be easy to upset Clinic Assistants by taking a more aggressive management stance. So it’s important that you adopt a management style that’s firm but caring, and fits with the nature of your clinic.

No matter what type of clinic you end up at, though, your job it to make sure everyone and everything in the office gets where they need to be. In a research clinic, for example, you keep materials and products moving, and make sure the laboratory is always set up and ready for its next procedure. In a Doctor’s or Dentist ’s office, you handle the flow of patients, putting new ones in rooms and making sure a Nurse sees them. You also keep the Doctor on task and aware of which patient is to be seen next. And on top of all these tasks, you’ll be helping with patients by taking blood samples, monitoring vital signs, recording medical histories, and prepping patients for exams.

In other words, you are the Ringmaster behind the craziness that is a high volume clinic. Your reign of order helps patients get seen, research get done, and employees work more productively and effectively.