As we shared in our recent webinar, job opportunities for medical assistant careers are significant. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of these professionals will grow 18 percent from 2020 to 2030 — “much faster” than the average for all occupations. To meet demand, schools across the country are starting medical assistant career pathway programs. If you’re among the many educators looking to prepare your students for success in these high-demand careers, consider these tips. You’ll find resources and information that will save you time and help you align tools and curriculum to jump-start courses.
Building a medical assistant pathway
When you begin to build your medical assistant pathway plan of study, there are many places you can start and resources to go to. Let’s take a look at the pathways that pertain to the Health Science Career Cluster®.
A medical assistant course of study falls squarely within the Therapeutic Services Pathway.
As you begin, a helpful website to go to is the National Career Clusters® Framework. There you’ll find an editable plan of study worksheet you can use to help lay out the courses you’ll need in your program.
Now, let’s consider what makes an effective Medical Assistant program.
There are six key elements for developing career pathways. These elements are important to consider for any pathway program you develop. These cyclical steps can help guide the development of any health science career pathway, especially a medical assistant program.
Teaching core competencies
Certification entities, such as the American Association of Medical Assistants or American Medical Technologist, offer “scopes of practice” for your state. You’ll also find lists of clinical competencies that medical assistants should have for certification. Once you have this information, you’ll know what skills you need to include in your own program.
Other helpful resources include:
- the National Consortium for Health Science Education (NCHSE). Their national health science standards provide a clear, consistent understanding of industry and post-secondary expectations for health science teachers and students. Better yet, these standards are designed to provide the essential knowledge common across health professions to prepare and increase the number of students that are college- and career-ready.
- Advance CTE’s Common Career Technical Core Standards for Health Science. They include specific, measurable performance objectives for the Health Science Career Cluster in general, as well as each pathway within the cluster. Review the standards that apply to the pathway you are developing to ensure that you are teaching these basic core competencies in your program.
- Advance CTE’s Knowledge and Skill Statements. Each specific pathway, including therapeutic, has knowledge and skills identified that students should know as well as an editable template that will help you develop the course for your plan of study.
Build an advisory council
Involving local healthcare industry leaders and clinical professionals in your pathway development is critical. How can you understand what local employers are looking for in a health care professional if you don’t ask? Consider putting together a health care advisory council. Choose these from a variety of settings and levels of responsibility to get a variety of viewpoints and input.
Meet on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly. Have a frank dialogue and ask, “What are you looking for in your employees?” Does your course content align with what they are looking for in the medical assistants they hire?
Use your advisory council members to form partnerships. Are they willing to allow students at their location for field or job experience or job shadowing? Also, are they interested in coming in to be a guest speaker in your classes?
Seek industry-recognized certifications
Many districts require that any career pathways created lead to industry-recognized certifications or credentials of some sort.
To find the right certifications or credentials for your program, ask the right questions, such as:
- Does your state department recommend a specific certification or testing agency?
- Are your instructors licensed to teach CMA courses?
- What are local employers looking for?
- Is employment transferrable?
- What is the cost of certification or a specific credential?
If you are newly developing a program, make sure you research and find out what to do so your students get certified properly. Are there any certifications that students can go after? For example, CPR?
Additional resources for seeking industry-recognized certifications include:
- American Medical Technologists’ Registered Medical Assistant Certification
- American Medical Certification Association (AMCA)’s Clinical Medical Assistant Certification and Medical Assistant Certification
- The National Healthcareer Association’s Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA)
- The National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI)’s Medical Assisting certification
Did you know that the NCHSE offers a Health Science Assessment? Although not a right-to-work credential, the assessment:
- Adds credibility of a national certification of achievement
- Satisfies Perkins requirements for technical attainment
- Validates student mastery of foundational healthcare knowledge and skills
- Shapes curriculum delivery through teacher reports identifying students’ success and areas of greatest need by standard
It also offers a variety of benefits to students!
Additionally, HOSA sponsors dozens of knowledge and skills competitions at the state and national level relating to a wide variety of health science topics. HOSA even has a medical assisting competitive event. Members are encouraged to take full advantage of the HOSA National Competitive Events Program as a way to increase the knowledge and skills as they prepare for future health occupations.
Recommended hands-on training tools for medical assistant programs
Here at Realityworks, we offer a basic package of resources that can be ordered as a complete set. However, we can just as easily customize a package for your unique program needs.
These are the recommended simulators and task trainers we have to provide students with the practical application of the content they have learned. These training tools will give your students the hands-on learning of transferable career skills and foundational knowledge they will use in medical assistant careers.
Now that you’re aware of the variety of hands-on resources that are available, you can begin to plan how to use these in the courses you have in your Plan of Study. If you already have some of these simulators and task trainers, you can begin to see where they best fit in your pathway. These will make your content memorable and make learning “sticky” for students.
Comprehensive curriculum is essential
Of course, curriculum forms the content backbone to any effective plan of study. What you teach is just as important as how you teach.
We have dozens of lessons from a variety of curricula provided with our experiential learning resources. We’ve reviewed them and put together a recommended package of content for a Medical Assistant pathway:
Once you see the breadth of content that is available, you can begin to figure out how to plug it into the courses you have in your plan of study. If you already have some of these experiential resources, you can begin to review the curriculum topics included and see where they best fit in your pathway.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. The lessons are created by educators, for educators. There are step-by-step instructions, assessments, slide presentations and ready-to-use activities.
More resources for starting medical assistant career pathway programs:
- Our standalone Employability Skills Program teaches 20 different soft skills. It can be used in any career pathway program. You can teach them all or pick and choose! The program comes with instructor guide, student workbooks and scenario cards. This is an easy way to significantly increase your soft skills instruction.
- Here is a helpful article about building a medical assistant curriculum for high school, plus advice on the best medical assistant certifications to offer in high school programs.
- Discover more resources and information on starting a medical assistant career pathway program by watching our on-demand webinar, “The Fundamentals of Starting a New Medical Assistant Career Pathway Program”
