Being a Medical Assisting student at Arizona College is very exciting! From the first day of class, students are integrated with other new Medical Assisting students, as well as, those who are in various stages of their program. It doesn’t take long before students make friends and form groups who often study together before or after class and attend open lab. Students often have a lot in common and are like-minded; since the idea of providing care to others intrigued them to become a Medical Assistant. There are 4 things that you might not have known about being a Medical Assistant student at Arizona College:
- Learn Valuable Front Office/Administration skills as part of the Medical Assisting curriculum. Being a Medical Assistant requires the flexibility and knowledge to work in both front office and back office environments. Because of this, Medical Assisting students at Arizona College learn how a medical Front Office operates. This includes:
- Patient check in and check out
- Payment processing
- Appointment scheduling
- Patient billing
- Phone call processing
- Health insurance coverage verification
- Medical record organization
- Utilizing computer applications
- Open lab is available to perfect those Medical Assisting procedures. Students have the option to attend open lab and gain additional lab time. Open lab is supervised by one of our Medical Assisting instructors, who are able to provide one-on-one guidance to master skills such as venipuncture, injections, mouth swabs, urine dips, EKG’s and vital signs. Open lab is a great opportunity to ask any additional questions one might have for certain procedures and to gain the confidence needed to excel.
- Learn to work in a variety of medical specialties. Students at Arizona College learn the skills required to work in multiple medical environments. Examples include: Pediatrics, Family Practice, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, Dermatology and Assisted Living Facilities. Each specialty has basic duties that the Medical Assistant will perform, but each will also have more detailed, specialty-specific duties required depending on the patient’s condition and orders of the physician.
- Give back to the community. The Program Directors at Arizona College often arrange events in which they volunteer their time and skills with their students in order to give back to the community. Medical Assisting students in particular, have attended healthcare events where they have checked vital signs and blood sugar levels for those in need. This is not only great hands-on practice for students; it is an excellent way for students to gain real-world experience while interacting with the general public in their new Medical Assisting role.
A career as a Medical Assistant is one that you can be proud of. On a daily basis, Medical Assistants provide much needed care to patients and work side-by-side with other healthcare professionals. If you are looking for information on how to become a Medical Assistant; the first step is to find an accredited school, like Arizona College. Call the school and take a tour…is it a place that you can imagine calling home until you complete your education? Talk to fellow students, what impressions do you have? If you would like to start your Medical Assisting journey with us, we would love to have you. Learn more today!
Information in this blog post is accurate as of April 9, 2015.