[Susan Gallagher]  Medical Office Assisting has actually two pathways.  

[Marcia Bermel]  Students learn both administrative skills as well as clinical skills in the two year program.  If you think of the medical office the upfront skills would be utilizing the computer, billing, coding, reimbursement to the insurances.  If you think of the clinical skills, those are more the back-office skills when you're taken back into the examining room.  Medical office assistances would do patient history, they take temperatures, height, weights, blood pressures, they assist a doctor in a procedure; they may do some minor laboratory work.

[Sonja Miller]  Courses that the students in the medical assisting department take is a fusion of office technology, clinical laboratory testing and nursing skills.  

[Marcia Bermel]  They take, in our area, offered by our department, they take medical ethics, they take medical terminology, which is a great course for anybody in the health professions.  We utilize also courses from the biology department; utilize courses from office administration management and administration and courses from health information technology.  

[Susan Gallagher]  The classroom environment in medical assisting varies from the typical lecture environment of faculty lecturing to more of an interactive with nursing skills.

[Marcia Bermel]  They learn all sorts of instrumentation that a doctor may use in procedures.  Clinical diagnostics they are exposed to E-K-G machines and do E-K-Gs and the in laboratory of course, because we also teach medical laboratory technology, our students in medical office assisting have all the laboratory equipment to do their studies for the office laboratory testing that they may need to know.

[Susan Gallagher]  That's your sinus rhythm, that goes up here and then this we would rip one, two and three.

[Marcia Bermel]  Upon successful completion of their coursework, they're placed in a medical office at a location that's convenient for them and a particular medical discipline that they are interested in.

[Susan Gallagher]  You go out and you would be in the doctor’s office all semester for a set amount of hours.

[Sonja Miller]  They actually go out their senior year for 160 hours of externship; 80 of which is in the administrative, secretarial component, front office and 80 hours in the nursing skills component.  

[Marcia Bermel]  Because it is 160 hours, the internship office really gets to know the student and if they do like the student's performance, it often means leads to job placement in the medical office.  

[Susan Gallagher] Physicians and hospitals are looking for educated, hard-working individuals with a degree where they're already have all the medical terminology background, the anatomy background and the office background in computer skills needed to basically manage an office eventually, if that that's the career path they want.

[Sonja Miller]  The arrow is pointing to what type of cell?

[Sonja Miller]  The students that graduate from the medical office assisting department sit for a national certification exam.

[Marcia Bermel]  And they become credentialed as certified medical assistants and have the credentials C-M-A and if you look in the job listings, they really are starting to require C-M-As now.

[Susan Gallagher]  The physicians realize that they have a degree; an associate in applied science.  They have now hired more C-M-As.  Kaleida has expressed a huge interest in our program, as well is in their own staff, asking their own staff to come through the program and get a degree in medical assisting.  

[Susan Gallagher]  A patient comes in, they are usually weighed, the vital signs are taken.

[Marcia Bermel]  Leaving our program, they are very well prepared to deal with the patients and can be very empathetic with the patient in terms of having the whole office experienced for that patient go well.