Medical assistants probably outnumber every other employee category in a clinic because they form a vital link between physician and patient, and they can perform many different tasks.
To be certified as a medical assistant, a student must attend a school accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (www.caahep.org) or by the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (www.abhes.org), according to Michelle Blesi, program director of Medical Assisting at Century College in White Bear Lake (www.century.edu).
Century offers a 48-credit diploma program, including a 300-hour clinical externship. Prerequisites include English composition, interpersonal/intercultural communications, human biology or anatomy and physiology, and psychology. Career requirements include a software or microcomputer course, medical terminology, laboratory techniques, clinical assisting and medical administrative procedures.
Externships give students hands-on experience
At the University of Minnesota Physicians Phalen Village Clinic in St. Paul, one of Century's 70 clinical externship sites, students rotate through administration, patient care, laboratory and x-ray in eight weeks, according to Mary Beth Collins, patient care supervisor at Phalen.
On the administrative end, they learn computer scheduling, telephone skills and how to work with the electronic medical record. "That's really helpful to them when they go out on a job, because virtually all the clinics have converted to electronic medical records," Collins says.
In the laboratory, they learn to draw blood and run tests such as blood counts, glucose and cholesterol levels. They also work with a microscope, perform rapid-kit strep tests and load test results into a computer for physician review.
Patient contact included
