There are thousands of people who dream of a career in the health care industry, and medical assistants, particularly are drawing more and more interested applicants. With a medical assistant certification exam behind you, you will be able to land yourself a plum job at a medical facility. A medical assistant certificate is not required by law but many choose to become certified, simply because it gives you so many better choices when it comes to looking for a job. Moreover, having a certificate offers peace of mind to those being nursed because it gives them the sense that the person treating them is qualified and professional.
Physicians’ offices and hospitals rely on certified medical assistants to perform tasks that they simply don’t have the time for. These medical assistants play an important role in performing important tasks like tending to patients, taking blood samples, doing administrative work as well as tending to booking and billing tasks.
To be able to perform these tasks, medical assistants will need to do medical assistant certification exams. There are a number of excellent websites and resources that offer tips and valuable information to give you the best results. There are two organizations that credential medical assistants and these are The American Association of Medical Assistants (AAMA) and the America Medical Technologists (AMT). They offer professional certification to allied health workers. The AAMA requires that the CMA credential be re-certified every five years. To be eligible to take these medical assistant exams, you must first complete and application form and send it in along with other applicable documents. You must also be graduating from an accredited medical assistant program.
Payment For The Exams
Payment for exams must accompany your application form. The fees are in the region of $90/95. You can pay with certified checks, money orders or credit cards.
If as a Medical Assistant, you are asking if you should become certified, the answer is ‘Yes’! It is in your best interests. Candidates will receive a percentile ranking score on the three areas of content in the tests which fall under general, admin and clinical.
Fantastic On-line Resources To Test Your Knowledge
- Med Preps at medpreps.com is a fantastic on-line resource that helps medical professionals succeed with their medical assistant certification exam. They way they do this is to offer students the means to do unlimited practice tests that copy the type of content that the real certification tests are about. You can simply go onto their website and follow the prompts on getting the sample tests. The exam papers will test your knowledge about patient care, record keeping and laboratory procedures.
- There are also many other online medical assistants examination papers offered on different websites that will provide tests in anatomy and physiology. Students can prepare for their medical assistant exams and have access to quizzes and competency tests and tutorials that are offered to review important medical assisting subject areas. With this plethora of exams for getting your certificate, medical assistant students who want to reach their career goals will be well with their academic studies.
- Take Northstar Learning for instance; they provide students with easy-to-use practice and preparation programs which are web based and which are geared towards helping students ace their exams. Students can prepare for the Certified Medical Assistant exam and get literally hundreds of practice questions very similar to the ones you will get on the actual exam. What is particularly useful with the way they go about these practice tests, is that, unlike other programs, Northstar Learning gives you as the student an explanation for each correct answer. This is really cool because then you can actually learn why the answer is correct. With their automatic grading, you can see the areas of the Certified Medical Assistant exam where you need to put in some extra effort.
With Northstar Learning, their certified medical assistant exam reviews are available for students to study any time, and they can work through the program at their own pace. The content of these exam papers are not just prepared carelessly by anyone; they have been created by Northstar Learning’s instructors, practitioners, in-house content team and other expert editors and writers. Students can rest assured they are answering questions similar to those they will see on the exam. If you as a medical assistant want to know how to go about ordering these brilliant study resources, you can contact Northstar Learning at 866.990.8175 or email them at info@northstarlearning.com.
What Is A Certified Medical Assistant?
It is a person who has passed the examination issued by the American Association of Medical Assistants. It tells everyone that as a medical assistant, you have all the correct and necessary knowledge and skills to perform all the tasks of a medical assistant.
Why Get Certified In The First Place?
The medical industry is huge and demanding, and employers simply prefer their staff to have certification because it means that the worker has the competence. For the medical assistant it means better pay, better job opportunities and better job security. Those who pass the certification exam will be recognized as Nationally Certified Allied Health care professionals, and with this certification, you will earn credentials to use with your name as a medical assistant anywhere in the United States.
Eligibility Requirements
A candidate must:
- be in possession of a high school diploma or GED
- have done a training program or have a year’s work behind them. Candidates sometimes are required to show proof of this training, bearing in mind that every certification program will have different requirements depending on the particular Nursing Board.
If you are a student at an Allied Health Association school you will need to pre-register for an exam in order to create an account with NHA; after which you will receive a date for the exam. Exam results for computer based exams will be available immediately. Candidates who pass will get their certification ID card as well as their certificate within a week or so. Results of paper exams will be mailed to you. Certification is valid for two years. To maintain certification you will need to complete continuing education credits every two years.
The goal of the NHA is to increase the quality of care for everyone and to also make the health care industry better. To this end they help with providing students with certifications needed to succeed in the health field.
A Nasty Reality Check
It can be pretty grueling if you as a medical assistant student have to tell your friends and family the ghastly news that you didn’t make the grade with the Medical Assistant Certification Exam. The nightmare is trying to get a job without the certification. Not being certified can have lifelong implications on your future.
The Certified Medical Assistant Certification Exam is an assessment of your knowledge and skills. The scores you achieve in the exam are used by the American Association of Medical Assistants as a standard of qualification, and your future will be dependent on meeting the required Certified Medical Assistant test score.
Learn To Recognize Between Wrong And Right Answer Choices
The questions in these tests are formatted as incomplete statements which are followed by choices. Not only are medical assistants given an idea of what kinds of questions to expect, they will also be given tips on how to actually predict the right answer from the different answer choices. Sometimes the answers from the selection are like trick answers and you will be given advice on to recognize the wrong answers even when they look so right. You will learn how to tell the difference between the correct answer and those ones that are very close to being the correct one.
Conclusion
There are many different schools offering national certification as part of their programs. The first step in preparing for a medical assistant certification exam is by getting yourself mentally ready. The exam may not be a particularly difficult one when compared to some of the other medical field exams but you want to be as well prepared as you can be to ace all your exams.
Knowing more or less what to expect in the exam is necessary because you want an idea of where you should be focusing. You will really benefit by making use of the different practice tests provided on the Internet and most of these tests can be downloaded from their websites. They cover all the essential exam topics and also offer valuable study hints. With their help you will know exactly what to expect on the day of the exam, which means being less stressed. The practices papers are designed for quick and easy use, and there are plenty of them containing different kinds of information and practice questions. Practice these tests and you will quickly get an idea of where your weak spots are so that you can give more attention there.