Certified Medical Assistant Exams - A Gateway To A Bright Future?Being a medical assistant brings with it a lot of advantages. It gives you job security, and a sense of professionalism. Every course now has an accreditation council or a governing body that certifies people to be of the quality that is required and demanded of medical assistants. A popular way of certification is a written exam where examinees are decided based on the results they obtain in the examination. Such an exam, particular to the medical assistant line, is called a certified medical assistant exam. Among the many certified medical assistant exams available, the one that merits special mention is the exam conducted by AAMA. AAMA is an abbreviation for the American Association of Medical Assistants. The certified medical assistant exam conducted by them is known as the AAMA CMA Certification examination. Once a candidate attends this examination and is found to have satisfactory results, then he or she might be considered a certified medical assistant.
There are, however, some prerequisites that the candidates must satisfy before taking this certified medical assistant exam. First and foremost, the certified medical assistant exam requires that the candidate finish his or her graduation from a certified and accredited medical assisting program. Some of the accreditations for the program are given by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) or the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES). The program includes a variety of subjects ranging from human anatomy to medical law and ethics. The timings of the exam have been constant for quite some time now. The AAMA certified medical assistant exam is conducted three times a year. It is conducted in January, June and October. To be more specific, the exam takes place on the last Friday of January, the last Saturday in June or the fourth Friday in October. The deadlines for submitting applications also follow a strict schedule. The deadline for collecting the application for the January installment of the exam is the 1st of October, of the previous year. Similarly, the application deadline for this certified medical assistant exam is March 1st of the same year and as for the October installment, it is the 1st of July of the same year. The application fee for this certified medical assistant exam varies accordingly. For graduates of Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) or the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES), the fee is $95. The amount stays the same for members of AAMA. For any other person wishing to write this certified medical assistant exam, the fee is $175. This certified medical assistant exam is conducted at almost 200 test centers distributed around the United States of America. Even though taking the exam is a voluntary choice that is left to medical assistants, the AAMA strongly recommends and backs the certification. In conclusion, a certification ensures the growth of a certain amount of competency among medical assistants and contributes pretty nicely to the overall environment. |
