Medical Assistant Professional DevelopmentEnhance the Skills and Roles of the Care Team

Who on the team should use the survey checklist to identify training opportunities?

Ideally, everyone on the team as well as patients the medical assistants interact with can use the survey checklist. Combining individual practice team members' unique perspectives will help you develop a more comprehensive set of information to identify and prioritize medical assistant professional development topics.

Involve medical assistants, physicians, nurses, registration staff, and other members of the team in prioritizing training topics and areas of focus. You can consider asking patients to complete the survey, or use their feedback from satisfaction surveys as a way to include their input. Consider involving practice or system leadership as well.

How much of a time commitment is the training?

Commit to provide medical assistant professional development sessions monthly for at least one year. Each session should be 45 minutes to one hour. Before starting the program, prepare to spend time on content development and creating space in the schedule for the hour-long lunchtime or pre-clinic sessions. Training should be considered a practice investment, so medical assistants should be compensated for attendance.

How can providing education to medical assistants improve the experience of patients, physicians, and other team members in our practice?

Shifting some of the physicians' administrative and clinical tasks to well-trained medical assistants gives physicians more time to concentrate on the patient during visits. For example, if an MA has the training to use expanded rooming protocols when rooming a patient, he or she will complete the following tasks:

• Update patient, family, and social history

• Update screening information

• Complete medication reconciliation and identification of patient questions or concerns about medications

• Scan records from specialists or other facilities into the medical record

• Accurately measure and record vital signs

• Place orders according to established standing order protocol

All medical assistant services must be provided within the applicable scope-of-practice parameters in the state or territory where the practice is physically located.

What are some examples of MA professional development topics that other practices have selected?

Examples of training categories include practice improvement, enhanced workflows, chronic disease management, and healthy team goals.

The materials in this toolkit cover the following topics:

• Professionalism in the medical assistant role

• Diabetes management and prevention

• Hypertension, obesity, and hyperlipidemia

• Health literacy

• Hospice

You may also want to consider developing your own materials on these topics:

• Panel/population health management

• Cancer screening criteria

• Conducting behavioral health screens

• Delivering normal laboratory results

• Community resources for patients

Should I develop my training materials from scratch, or are there prepackaged materials I can use?

For most of the common topics, you do not have to create your own training materials. You can start with the handouts and activities included in this toolkit. For additional resources, use vetted health education resources, peer-reviewed journal articles, and your specialty's professional society guidelines. You can start by reviewing the educational resources available from the American Association of Medical Assistants and other organizations, such as the American Diabetes Association, the National Diabetes Education Program, and the American Heart Association, which often have dedicated training materials available on their websites. Always obtain permission to use and re-print materials created by other organizations.

The AMA STEPS Forward™ site includes toolkits that address various topics that may be appropriate for your medical assistant professional development program, including medication adherence and panel management. You can also find workflow design and optimization resources, including toolkits on team huddles, pre-visit planning, starting Lean health care, and implementing team-based care.

Is it important to use pre-session learning tools for each session?

Yes. Try to provide similar tools for each session to develop a consistent framework. These tools enable the medical assistants to acclimate to the training style and feel prepared for each session. The tools should be lean, consistent, and scalable as the program continues to grow.

How should we make sure the training sessions are successful from the medical assistants' perspective?

Check in with the medical assistants regularly—for example, one week after each session—and ask what they thought about the most recent session, what they think of the program so far, how lessons learned from the most recent session are fitting in with their work, and if they have any questions.

To make the sessions, and the training program overall, the most effective they can be, consider the following activities:

• Play games or do activities to test and reinforce the teachings at the end of each session.

• Administer a brief survey (5 questions or fewer) at the end of each session to make sure the content and format are effective.

• Use verbal teach-back style questioning to confirm the impact of the training. If you're using this approach, you might ask, “What are the 3 most important things you learned about health literacy?”

• Conduct a follow-up survey at the end of the year-long program to see what sessions resonated most with the medical assistants and how they are using what they learned in their daily work. At this point, it might be worth revisiting a popular topic or one that requires some additional reinforcement.

How should we evaluate the program?

Using data from the pre- and post-session assessments can indicate whether the program is positively affecting medical assistants' confidence, understanding of clinic workflows, performance in their role, and job satisfaction. These are easy to measure and provide valuable insight. You may also consider gathering feedback from the medical assistants, other care team members, and patients using end-of-year surveys.

Monitor any new skills or processes that should be used regularly after each session, such as a new protocol for documenting information in the medical record or a better approach to measuring blood pressure during the rooming process. A practice coach (who could be the person who gave the training or another member of the practice team) or the MA supervisor can shadow the medical assistants to ensure that they understand and are using the new skill or process. These audits give the opportunity for ongoing coaching and feedback. Your practice may also choose to monitor metrics on your patient satisfaction survey related to medical assistant professionalism and clinical care.

How can we maximize the impact of our program?

Involve an interdisciplinary team when executing the program in your practice. This approach lends credibility to the program and promotes success. Consider linking sessions to other practice activities to improve engagement. For example, if your clinic sees many patients with diabetes, hold training on the importance of preparing patients for diabetic foot exams in advance of National Diabetes Month, which is in November. You may also consider connecting your training topics to statewide or national health initiatives.

Team-based presentations may help your medical assistants get the most out of the training. Bringing in outside speakers who are experts on various topics, such as a nurse practitioner with hospice experience, or having 2 team members co-present on a pilot they've participated in can be very effective and engaging.

Do we need to pilot the new program, or can we roll it out all at once?

If you have more than 10 medical assistants in the practice, consider piloting the professional development program in 1 or 2 pods or teams within the clinic. Five or 6 MAs would be able to give valuable feedback about the teaching methods and delivery of material in these pilot sessions.

Depending on how often you decide to hold sessions, plan to run the pilot for 4 to 6 sessions or up to 6 months. Communicate with the other medical assistants and teams in the practice that are not part of the pilot so they know that they will be included in the program's official rollout and when that will occur. It is important to emphasize the importance of medical assistant development with the practice team and to communicate the benefit of improving patient care and enhancing professional satisfaction.