Medical assisting is a growing industry. Many are joining it because it is a very good source of steady income. As the number continues to increase, health care professionals such as doctors, nurses, dentists, and others now look for skilled and efficient medical assistants. Although the government does not require it, it is to one’s advantage to be certified when one wants to be employed as one. Training to be certified can be costly. But thanks to technology, one can now learn to become an assistant online and spend less than when one trains formally in school.
There are various online courses from which a student can choose from. They can be categorized into four: first, the certificate courses; second the diploma course; third, the associate in medical assisting course; and lastly, the free online courses offered by top universities in the United States. Training in any of these will increase one’s skill and marketability or if one is already employed can raise his or her salary level.
The certificate courses are individual subjects in the full diploma a course in miracles course. This includes Anatomy, Physiology, Medical Transcription, Medical Billing and Medical Coding. If a student does not like to work on a full diploma course, he can train on individual subjects. He will be given a certificate for the training. But he will not be eligible to take the examination for certification.
The Diploma is another category of online courses. It consists of the core subjects required in medical assisting. If one successfully completes the training, he is eligible to take the examination to obtain a certificate as medical assistant.
The Associate in Medical Assisting includes all the subjects in the diploma course plus general subjects required for this level. Successful completion of this also enables one to take the test to obtain a certificate.
There are free online courses offered by some of the top universities in the United States. These are in the form of videos, audio files and mp3’s. One of these is the MIT Medical Computing Course. It is an Open Course Ware which teaches the students to become medically efficient by taking the genetic make-up of patients and using the latest technology to diagnose and treat patients.
Another one in this category is the Medical Decision Support also at MIT. This teaches the students how to analyze decisions and evaluate patients. It teaches the students to see the advantages and disadvantages of decisions as applied to real events using the course. There is also the Physician Assistant Website which contains a list of web links to medical books, glossaries and medical terminologies.