Medical Assisting faculty members (l-r):  Karon Walton, Stephanie McGahee, Lisa Nagle (Department Head), Shannon Henninger and Sonya Burns

Lisa Nagle, director of the medical assisting program at Augusta Technical College was quoted in a recent article in Certified Medical Assistant Today (CMA Today) magazine.  According to Ms. Nagle, the medical assisting program uses scenarios and role-playing to bridge between lower and higher learning levels.  "Everyone has been to the doctor," Ms. Nagle says.  "I ask them, 'When was the last time you went to the doctor?  What did you see?  Did you see the glass windows?  Were they shut?  Did you sign in?  Was there someone there with a smile to greet you?'  I try to bring it into their real life experiences."

Before their externships in the final term of the medical assisting program, Augusta Tech students participate in a comprehensive project that requires them to follow specific criteria.  They e-mail faculty and staff to participate in a hematology study, schedule appointments, draw blood, perform tasks and call patients with the results.  These activities demonstrate the students' higher level skills such as analysis and synthesis.

CMA Today is published by the American Association of Medical Assistants and is the only publication of its kind dedicated to meeting the educational and informational needs of the practicing medical assistant.  With a circulation of more than 20,000, CMA Today provides its readers timely coverage of medical assisting issues and trends and detailed, in-depth articles on every aspect of medical assisting operations.  The information quoted above is from an article written by Laura Asplund and published in the January/February 2006 issue of CMA Today.  To find out more about CMA Today, select the link below.

http://www.aama-ntl.org/CMAToday/about.aspx