It is my understanding that no public facility will hire anyone without proper training, but some private facilities will hire an untrained medical assistant. Your wage will potentially be dramatically decreased but its being done without the proper education or skills needed. Many people say that becoming a medical assistant could be achieved just by simply on the job training. It’s basically a clerical position in a medical office. Some people don’t have the time or the financial means to become a degree holding medical assistant. They feel that jumping right into the job market is the only option. It is apparent to me that the majority of people on the street think that medical assisting doesn’t require much knowledge and it’s hardly a subsistence level income. It will most likely take you the rest of your life just to pay back the educational loan.
An office manager said that if you want to be a nurse, go to nursing school. Nursing is an accredited program. What he sees Medical Assistant’s do, anyone off the street can do. A lot of practices train you on the job; you just aren’t certified unless you take that initiative upon yourself. Nursing is totally different from Medical Assistants and is more recognized. There are some that have defended that the medical assisting degree is a scam. It is a degree in Associates in Applied Science, but you should still check out what the overall cost of the program will be versus the potential pay. If you go to a community college, you are doing things the smart way. There are a lot of for-profit technical colleges that advertise Medical Assisting as one of their programs and encourage the student to take out large student loans to pay the fees. They convince them that the program will lead to endless opportunities when in reality there aren’t that many job openings for the Medical Assistant compared to the large number of graduates. You end up with a worthless certificate and $20K-30K in student loan debt. All the job pays is about $8-$10 an hour.
I know for a fact that skill and knowledge is needed to be a good medical assistant. There are perhaps many jobs out there that do not require the educational background or a degree, but they also will not pay the salary that a Certified Medical Assistant would receive. Medical Assistants have traditionally held jobs almost exclusively in ambulatory care centers, urgent care facilities, and clinics, but this is now changing. Today more Medical Assistants are finding employment in both private and public hospitals, as well as inpatient and outpatient facilities. There are higher expectations of the Medical Assistant today than there were many years ago. The Medical Assisting career can be very rewarding and satisfying.
Works Cited
Medical Assistant Net Blog: Find the Dream Job of Becoming a Medical Assistant.
Advanced Medical Assistant Custom Web Design, LLC.
<http://medicalassistantnet.blogspot.com/2011/04/finding-dream-job-of-becoming- medical.html>. Published and updated 2006-2011. Accessed April 26, 2011.
WiseGeek: What Does a Medical Assistant Do? Conjecture corporation.
<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-medical-assistant-do.htm>.
Published 2003–2011. Accessed April 26, 2011.
YahooAnswers.com: Why do people say a Medical Assistant Degree is a scam?
2011 Yahoo.inc. Accessed April 26, 2011.
These are great popular perceptions: well done. The Yahoo answers one about the degree being a scam is probably a good one for your genre analysis paper.
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