Medical Assistant
Jennifer Barr, MT > Sinclair Community College
By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be
Not many jobs in the field of medicine offer regular hours — no holidays or midnight shifts.
Being a medical assistant usually does.
“Medical assistants work in doctors’ offices, urgent care facilities and clinics,” said Jennifer Barr, chairperson of the Medical Assistant Technology program at Sinclair Community College.
Barr — a Certified Medical Assistant herself — said that there are different levels of MAs and their duties encompass many parts of the health care field.
“If you have been to the doctor lately, chances are it was a medical assistant assisting you — not a nurse. They basically work under the auspice of the physician so there are times when a person can just come off the street and (get a job),” she said.
To become certified by the American Association of Medical Assistants, however, the candidate must have graduated from a school accredited by the Commission for Accreditation for Allied Health Education Programs before being eligible to sit for the national exam. Sinclair, a CAAHEP school, offers an associate degree in medical assistant technology. “So far we have had a 100 percent pass rate on the certification exam and we have had 100 percent placement of our graduates,” Barr said proudly.
“There is a huge demand (for MAs). It is rated in the top 10 of the fastest-growing health care professions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” she continued.
So what exactly does a medical assistant do?
“They can administer medicine, they can draw blood, they can assist with minor office surgeries,” Barr related. “They deal with pediatrics all the way up to geriatrics. They take vital signs and they can do the administrative work.
“They can check you in (to the doctor’s office ) and they can check you out,” she continued. “They can also do the billing for the office.
“Medical assistants can basically run a physician’s office from the front end where they greet patients to the back end where they are assisting patients,” she said. “It is a lot of variety and one day is not the same as the next. It is very active and very exciting.”
She cautions that an MA is not a nurse. “(It is) a different profession from nursing. Nursing works with acute-care patients. We work with ambulatory patients,” she explained. “Basically what we say is that ‘nursing patients roll in and medical assistant patients walk in.’”
Barr got a bachelor’s degree as a medical technologist from Eastern Kentucky University and worked in a laboratory in Tulsa, Okla. She married a chiropractic physician and became his medical assistant (at that time, a degree in MA was not necessary to take the exam.)
She got her Master of Education degree from Wright State University and is nearing completion on her doctorate in Health Care Services Administration.
“Once you have graduated as a Medical Assistant, you can go anywhere (to work),” she said. “You can go to insurance companies and travel around and do insurance physicals. You can go into pharmaceutical sales. You are not limited to just physicians’ offices,” she said.
Medical Assistants might work 10-hour days or half-days on Saturdays. Some urgent care facilities are open late so a second shift is a possibility if the MA decides to work there. “Generally, it is a day-time job,” Barr said.
