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The Career Opportunities in the Nursing field are no longer just your general nursing positions. Nursing is no longer “just a shot in the arm” or the plain ‘ole school nurse, nor does the field mean you must wear a white mini skirt. There are excellent opportunities for nurses in the “forensic” areas as well as the “legal” fields.

Legal Nurse Consulting – Nursing has moved into the “legal” field in the role of “Legal Nurse Consulting”. Legal Nurse Consultants can use their knowledge and expertise in the medical field added alongside their knowledge and expertise in the legal field in order to specialize as a Legal Nurse Consultant. Legal Nurse Consultants are thought to be a new specialty; however nurses have been doing legal consulting for decades. This field has become more and more prominent in the last ten to fifteen years. Many nurses have chosen full-time private practice and the demand for their services has risen. It has been noted that lawsuits are on the rise and nurses look for alternatives to the typical bedside nursing careers. Nurses’ specialized experience, knowledge, and training are highly regarded and respected in the legal arena.

The Legal Nurse Consultants not only provide their variety of services such as reviewing records to identify standards of care, conduct research and summarize medical literature, identify and apply regulatory requirements, educate attorneys about medical issues, assist with depositions and trials, and screen initial cases to see if they have merit, but they also can testify in a court of law as well as testify as an expert witness on such cases the consultant has worked on. As an example, the consultant may work on personal injury cases, criminal cases, toxic torts, product liabilities as well as large class-action suits. The consultants work may vary according to their interests and backgrounds. Every case is different, thus never a dull moment.

If a nurse is considering in specializing in the legal field, it is highly recommended that he/she research the field prior to diving into this new field. It is also important that the new consultant have at least three months of income saved in order to enable the consultant to concentrate in starting their own business, if such is desired, and well thought out marketing of their new business. Many consultants have started working part time when they are first getting started and then switch to full-time once they have built a client base, according to the AALNC (American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants). The consultants do work on an hourly set fee which may range from $60 to $150 an hour for independent legal nurse consultants, while salaries for LNC’s who work for employers are comparable to nursing salaries in a clinical setting. Legal nurse consultants must be licensed registered nurses and it is also recommended that they have at least three years of nursing experience. In addition to their marketing strategies, doing volunteer work through the local bar association is a good way to get to know and network with attorneys. They can be trained and certified as a Legal Nurse Consultant through the AALNC or other educational programs; however certification is not mandatory. As in any other business, your own personal success lies within you. Your goals, of course, depend on your personal wants, needs, and tenacity. As any business entrepreneur, you will need to strategize your marketing plan which can be challenging, but is part of your personal success. Needless to say, legal nurse consulting is not for everyone. In order for a consultant to succeed in this specialty, one must be a self-starter, strong communicator and have highly tuned critical and analytical thinking skills. If you think about it though, these attributes I have listed are really the making of any successful professional, regardless of your choice of field.

Forensic Nursing – Another excellent choice of specialized field for nurses is “Forensic Nursing”. When most people hear the term “forensic”, they immediately think of your typical ideal of the word and think of maybe the County Morgue. Forensic nursing is an exciting career that combines nursing with detective work and criminal law. The position requires a tremendous amount of researching as well as investigating. One of many of the positions that a forensic nurse can be working in is as a “Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE)”. Such a forensic nurse would ensure that evidence is collected appropriately and can be used in a court of law. Forensic nursing is relatively a new field that combines the health care profession with the judicial system. The International Association of Forensic Nursing (IAFN) held its first international certification exam in April of 2002. While certification is not mandatory in order to work as a forensic nurse, it is believed that it does give added credibility. Credibility is in fact important because one of the key parts of the forensic nurse’s role, in addition to their performance of comprehensive exams in the hospital, is to give testimony in court.

The legal court system has begun to recognize the expertise of forensic nurse examiners and is beginning to be qualified as experts. When testifying in court, forensic nurses can be qualified as either an expert witness, who would allow them to give his or her opinion, or a fact witness, which would allow them to state the facts only. The forensic nurses are presented by the prosecutor in the courtroom, when they are to testify. When testifying at trials, they are there to present information in an objective manner and not speak for or against the victim or the defendant. The forensic nurse is there to present the facts of the examination they performed.

It offers tremendous opportunities for both recent graduates and experienced registered nurses looking for a career change. It is believed, that there is also a strong need for better minority representation in this field. Statistics show that approximately 50% of the victims treated are African American and approximately 20% are Latina. It is believed that such minority victims may be more apt to report the sexual crimes they have experienced if they were aware that the forensic nurses that will examine them are of their own race; thus, they may feel more comfortable in seeking medical assistance.

Forensic nurses can help more than just rape victims. Although much of the focus of forensic nursing is on the sexual assault, forensic nurses are not limited to working on just these types of cases. Many nurses work with victims of interpersonal abuse, including domestic violence, child and elder abuse/neglect and physiological/psychological abuses. Forensic nurses can also examine victims of near-fatal or fatal traumas, such as shootings or stabbings, or possibly even as death investigators.

You must know when to draw the line between being an empathetic nurse and being there to do your job – to collect your evidence. In cases of stabbings or shootings, forensic nurses collect such evidence as bullets and any debris that is on the body, such as leaves that may have clung to the body from the crime scene. The nurse is also in charge of removing the bloody clothes the victim was wearing and putting them in a special wrapping in order to conserve the item. The nurses may also photograph and measure wounds. If the victim has died, the forensic nurse examiner will often collaborate with the medical examiner assigned to the case, answer any questions the medical examiner may have with regards to what the nurse may have seen during the exam. A nurse wanting to move into the forensic nursing field, would have to their advantage to have emergency room nursing experience.

Not only is it an exciting and rewarding career, their demand is rapidly rising. Forensic nurses are even being incorporated into the emergency room setting now. Previously, hospitals felt that any nurse could collect evidence; however, a forensic nurse will have the knowledge and the expertise of what evidence should be collected and how to preserve the evidence so that it is not accidentally destroyed; thus, a more positive outcome in the courtroom in catching the criminal.

As a registered nurse, as in any other career of your choice, it is good to know what your career options may be. As a registered nurse is good to have a list of all of the different types of nursing positions that you have available to select from, depending on what may work best for you. I feel it is very important that you are aware, that in addition to the many opportunities you have available to you, as a nurse, you now also have available the positions of Forensic Nursing or Legal Nurse Consulting and what each of the two career’s job descriptions entail.

With almost 2.6M registered nurses (RN) in the United States, nursing is now the largest health care profession in the country. If you think that hospitals are the only place a nurse could be found, you are certainly misled. Public health agencies, communities, ambulatory care centers and other places where health care services are rendered also commonly have nurses employed.

1. The Nursing Practice

Nursing covers a wide area of practice. It includes

- Childcare

- Elderly care

- Services for pregnant women

- Services for newborn infants

- Specialty area – injury nursing

- Specialty area – cancer nursing

- Specialty area – forensic nursing

2. Choose Your Nursing Program

The first step to be a nurse is to graduate from a nursing program. This would enable you to take a state licensure examination. In the US, more than 1500 nursing programs are offered. Three of these programs prepare you in assuming different tasks once you graduate.

A. A Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN)

This is a four-year curriculum offered in colleges and universities. A graduate of this course has the advantage of learning health care settings that includes leadership and management. A degree in BSN is preferred and often required in many fields of nursing.

B. Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN)

This is a 2 to 3 year program offered in community college as well as in junior collages. This program prepares the student in handling direct patient care.

C. Hospital Diploma

This is a 2 to 3 year program that is based in hospitals.

3. Nursing Positions

Now that you’ve covered the basics, let’s take a closer look on some of the nursing positions you can occupy. These positions are based on your experience and education.

A. Entry-level nursing position

This is the Staff Nurse Position. The nurse takes on making judgments based on scientific knowledge. You have to rely on procedures and standardized care plans.

B. Certified Mid-wife

This is a specialty nurse position where the nurse aids childbearing women. It starts during the preconception stage and goes through the prenatal, labor and delivery. Postpartum period care is also included in her duties. The nurse also provides family planning counseling as well as gynecological care for women.

C. Case Manager

Over time, a nurse can become a nurse case manager. In this position, the nurse will be involved in the process of organizing as well as coordinating the resources and services of an entire group of nurses, such as an entire hospital.

D. Nurse Educator

This is also a position a nurse could get involved with. Educating people about proper health care needs and procedures would be the basic tasks for this position. A Nurse Practitioner on the other hand conducts physical exams on patients, conducts diagnoses and provides treatments. A nurse practitioner could also write prescriptions and could also manage patients with chronic conditions such as diabetics and those with hypertension.

E. Nurse Anesthetist

A Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist assists during operations. They give anesthesia to the patients before and after the operation.

There are also various specialty nursing programs that would help you specialize in a specific area. Radiology Nursing, Rehabilitation Nursing, AIDS Care Nursing, and Forensic Nursing are few of these specialty areas. Radiology Nurses are concerned with patients that undergo diagnosis in radiology imaging environments. It also includes Ultrasonography, magnetic resonance and radiation oncology. Rehabilitation Nurses or Psychiatric Nurses takes on providing physical and emotional support both to the patient and their families. They deal with patients having mental incapacities. An AIDS Care Nurse manages the physical, psychological, spiritual and social needs of a patient suffering with AIDS. A Forensic Nurse works in a different environment with other nurses. They work with the law enforcement officials to help in the investigation of crimes like sexual assault and accidental death. They also help in the treatment of the victims of these crimes.

A pure science graduate who has been working for two years – John (not his real name), a lab technologist – read an article about “Best Jobs in America” from CNNMoney.com at his working place before he went out for lunch. He felt a bit uneasy when he found out that “Physical Assistant” was reviewed second of all the best jobs in America which claimed to have great pay (median salary approximately $90,900) and growth prospects (with 27% 10-year job growth).

He strongly felt that he had the great chance to earn this PA job as he has related working experience and academic qualification, and he was looking forward to seeking other opportunities rather than earning a mediocre salary – approximately $24,000 per annum.

But John still ended up working in the same lab – why?

It was because he did not take enough actions to get what he really wanted. He was not trying hard enough.

How to be a part of this amazing profession?

Knowing the route of this career

By knowing the pathway of this career, it’s like knowing which direction to take while you’re heading to a destination – You’ll stay focused on the flow/direction and create related goals gradually throughout the whole study process. For instance, like most professions, you have to pass a series of board exams that are accredited by the National Certifying Board of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).

Some people couldn’t endure too many examinations as PA’s are required to pass a nation board exam and must re-certify every 6 years by passing another board exam. If you want to become a PA, you must have high-determination and patience as these common values are normally possessed by physicians and nurses.

Don’t make any attempt of pursuing PA education if you don’t want to have any patient contact. Like any other medical professions, PA is also considered as a caring healthcare profession. A PA needs to spend more time with patients than the physicians and often get more accurate information to make a more rapid diagnosis.

Understand the competition – Take PA job application seriously

Job listing for PA is still considered small but it has created huge competition among PA job seekers as more people are seeking high salary and security. As one of the job application, you need to have a vision of becoming an outstanding employee in order to outsmart your competitors. You have to take everything seriously for your job application including:

Writing cover letter – A cover letter is must for any job application even if you send your application online. Writing resume – Have to be honest in writing your resume. Be particularly with the fonts and layouts of your resume. You can use the resume template in Microsoft Word. Your photograph – Invest some money to produce good quality photos for your job application. Start visiting the nearest photo studio at your neighborhood. Interviews – Get prepared for the hardest interview questions. You can get these questions (and answers) in advance from sites like Jobinterviewquestions.org and Jobsearch.about.com. Remember to dress nicely for your interview – You have to dress to impress your interviewers as your appearance can affect their judgment on your credibility at work. Your confidence tends to grow if you look good during your interview and you will be able establish a good rapport with your interviewers.

There are no definite shortcuts in life as you have to show enormous effort to become a physician assistant. Don’t be like John – start making appropriate planning and actions before it’s too late.

There are myriad reasons for you to focus your efforts towards building a career as a medical assistant! Although the medical assistant profession can be very challenging, involving a lot of dedication and responsibility, it also brings many financial and personal satisfactions. Undoubtedly, medical assistants have always been considered to be major components of the healthcare industry, fulfilling a set of vital roles in the medical offices. As a medical assistant, you have the opportunity to offer a very important service to the community, by participating actively in the ongoing process of patients’ care and by channeling your efforts towards improving the patients’ health.

Unlike other professions in the medical field, the medical assistant profession involves a lot of interaction and communication, both with the monitored patients and with other members of the medical staff. Thus, besides being the main healthcare provider for patients, as a medical assistant you also have the opportunity to offer patients a lot of moral support. Due to its eclectic nature and the pronounced level of interaction with people, the medical assistant profession is considered to be a very demanding profession, requiring a wide range of practical and theoretical skills, good decision making abilities, good communication skills and nevertheless, a lot of talent!

Although a career as a medical assistant can be very challenging, it also brings a lot of satisfaction! Apart from the noble and altruistic nature of the profession which allows practitioners to offer an important service to the community, ensuring the well-being of patients, the medical assistant profession is also very lucrative and financially stable. While an inexperienced medical assistant may at first earn an annual $20,000 salary, fully qualified medical assistants may eventually earn more than $40, 000 a year.  Due to the ongoing development and expansion of the healthcare industry, the request for medical assistants is very acute in present and it is expected to further grow in the coming years, thus rendering the medical assistant career stable and secure on professional level. In addition, well-trained medical assistants have very good prospects for promotion in the medical field, being able to qualify for various administrative occupations or become medical technology professionals.

In order to fulfill your dream of becoming a qualified medical assistant, it is very important not to neglect your professional training. Keep in mind that proper medical assistant training is crucial for becoming certified and acquiring important credentials in a short period of time. At first, medical assistant training focuses on familiarizing you with the basics, later helping you to further expand your knowledge and overall practical skills required.  The best thing to do in order to ensure a secure career in the field is to attend a high quality medical assistant training program at a highly recognized medical assistant school. By attending to a good medical assistant school, you will be able to polish your skills as a medical assistant and become a true professional in your branch. The medical assistant training you will receive in a highly recognized medical assistant school will greatly increase your chances of obtaining your desired certifications and accreditations from the first try, allowing you to build the scaffolds of a promising career in no time!

There are various medical assistant schools out there, each of them offering different advantages and disadvantages. The trick to finding the most appropriate medical assistant school for you is to carefully decide upon the level of professional medical assistant training you wish to achieve and to analyze the resources you benefit from; you should know exactly how much time, money and effort you are willing to invest in your medical assistant training long before you start attending to the courses of a certain medical assistant school. For instance, although they may offer similar credentials, some medical assistant schools have the advantage of allowing students to graduate sooner than others.

In order to find out exactly what to expect from a certain kind of medical assistant training offered by a given medical assistant school, it is very important to do a little research before choosing the most appropriate educational program for you. After you have decided upon a medical assistant training program, you should maintain your motivation levels high and work hard to achieve your pre-established goals. While some training programs may be better than others, and some medical assistant schools may be more popular than others, in the end the success of your medical assistant career is direct proportional with your motivation, dedication and not to mention, talent!

by: Deborah S. Hildebrand

Despite the economy, career opportunities in health care and nursing are booming. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as recently as 2006, the health care field was the largest in the U.S., offering approximately 14 million jobs as well as seven of the 20 fastest growing occupations.

The following details how to get a career in this in-demand field.

Certification and On-the-Job Training Options

One interesting fact about the health care field is that many positions require less than a four-year degree, in fact some of the fastest growing health care jobs require little or no specialized education. Careers including nursing and home health aides as well as medical and dental assistants get their training on the job or through a certificate program.

Undergraduate Career Options

Undergraduate degrees offer even more nursing and health care career options. Along with traditional careers such as registered nursing, social work and occupational therapy, there are new trends opening in the field of health care. For instance, RNs who might want to follow a different career could consider becoming a certified legal nurse consultant (CLNC). CLNCs assist attorneys with medical issues. Another new job trend is medical illustration. Medical illustrators use their knowledge of human science and medical concepts to create educational materials for publications and journals and can earn as much $75,000 annually.

Higher Education Career Options

Naturally, higher education offers opportunities for surgeons, psychiatrists, cardiologists and other doctors. However, if medical school isn’t your thing, getting a higher education in the health care field offers a variety of other lucrative positions. Genetics, for instance, is a health care field that offers unique and in-demand jobs. Such jobs include behavioral geneticists, who solve health problems by identifying gene-related therapies, and genetics counseling, which involves informing and supporting families who have members with birth defects or genetic disorders.

A very simple explanation behind this phenomenon is the life expectancy of humans. You read it right! World Health Organization has declared that that the life expectancy has increased to 80! Therefore we can expect more people getting old that would need medical attention. Though the demand for doctors are highly in demand we still can not expect the needs will be met. The reality we are facing now is the fact that only few families can send their child to a medical school and not every family can support their kid’s college education! This is why the demand for medical professionals are hardly being met. Based on these facts all types of Doctors needs an assistant to help them to make the job faster so that more patients can be attended to. With all the hospitals and medical centres in the world that have limited number of doctors, the more patients suffer. If you want to be a part of health and medical practitioners but don’t have the means to be a doctor, you may want to consider a medical assistant job as an alternative. You can also consider the fact that a medical assistant salary wouldn’t be so bad at all especially if you’re a doctor’s assistant.

Being a medical assistant is like being a nurse. The job nurses do is not so different but of course as a nurse they are more into providing intensive assistance to doctors when it comes to clinical procedures. The main job of a medical assistant is to take and record the patients’ vital signs, maintain medical records as well as medical history of all the patients of the doctor he/she is working for, take care of appointment setting and insurance filing. When it comes to clinical duties they would have to know how to draw blood from patients, prepare patients for laboratory check-up and medicine administration instructed by the doctor. The job may require a lot of duties to be performed but a medical assistant salary will surely pay off all the hard work. The truth is, all the tasks that should be done to assist a doctor wouldn’t be so hard to do, all it takes is a little getting used to. This type of job pays around ten dollars up to fifteen dollars per hour, is that still bad? I don’t think so, in fact the pay is quite good!
The work entitles you to provide your service or help to those who are need and you get compensated nicely, isn’t that fulfilling?

The annual medical assistant salary ranges from $22,000 up to $31,500 but will surely increase as the demand sky rockets in the next few years. This work can also help you aim for a higher position or get promoted as a medical office manager and take home approximately $46,000 per year. As the demand for doctors increase the need for medical assistants got higher too. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars just to have a career in the medical industry! Be smart and practical! Get yourself certified as a medical assistant and fulfill your dreams of having a good career that gives a medical assistant salary worth having a good life.

If you wish to become a nurse and are interested to work for courtrooms and emergency rooms then pursuing legal nurse programs is the best option for you.

Legal nurses utilize their health care knowledge and legal system interest to make a rewarding legal nurse consulting career. Legal nurse consultants are also known to defense prosecutors or attorneys for their pharmacological or forensic familiarity to assist in determining the difficulty of civil or criminal cases. The legal nurses consult with prosecutors and others in legal field on topics related to personal injury, medical malpractice, workers compensation, etc. The legal nurse consultants are also responsible for reviewing medical records, interviewing clients, researching and processing medical literature, assisting in evaluating damages and liabilities, preparing exhibits, helping with depositions, and are considered as expert witnesses.

A legal nurse consultant often has a previous experience in emergency rooms and other disciplines and who further undergoes training at different legal nursing schools. The schools providing legal nurse programs also offer online degree coursework in personal injury, legal ethics, legal writing and forensic science to name a few. Also, you can also take dedicated classes in the legal issues about auto accident damage, medical malpractice, product liability and lower back pain.

A certified legal nurse is constantly hired to work with corporate lawyers and private attorneys. However, many of the legal court consultants are able to locate work outside the courtroom as well. You can also find work in insurance companies, hospitals and the government agencies. Many legal nurse consultants are also contracted to give quality assurance at various chemical companies and pharmaceutical firms. According to the recent salary survey by nursing management, 50% of the legal nurse’s work as a staff at insurance companies, law firms and other institutions, and they all earn similar salaries to those working as nursing administrators at the hospitals and make around $8000 a year. The rest 50% work independently and make around $100 to $150 an hour.

The jobs for legal nurse consultants are predicted to grow in the next 10 years because many companies will introduce devices and medications that have been approved federally or have been reviewed by the governmental agencies and in courtroom. An individual does need formal training in a legal nurse consulting career to practice, and several educational and training programs are offered by community colleges, universities and various public institutions.

It is very easy to start your career as a legal nurse consultant because you don’t need a BSN but just require a valid RN license. Also, legal nursing experience is also not required. There are many legal nurses who are practicing in US in both urban and rural areas. Taking up legal nurse consulting as a career will not only provide you a great growth but will also open up new career prospective.

Off to college with you! Your parents always wanted to brag about their offspring’s going to medical school, and now they get their chance! But the medical field, being as vast as it is, gives you so much choice that narrowing down your ambitions to a specific field takes a lot of deep thought. One career path that many medical school students are finding their easiest path is the physician assistant, known as PA for short.

In the first place, if you’re looking for financial benefit look no further than Money magazine: they rate PAs as number thirty out of the top fifty jobs! For starters, it’s the fastest-growing field, with an incredible 49.65% growth, outpacing even – Saints preserve us! – a software engineer at number two. And you didn’t want to spend your days in a boring cubicle writing computer programs all day anyway, right? Total jobs for PAs in 2004 were 61,963; the expected demand in 2014 is estimated to be 92,726.

The average pay, while not exactly a lottery jackpot, is a tidy $75,117/year, and the estimated top salary is a tidier $93,474/year. Consider also that you get a benefits package and a ton of perks: PAs are needed everywhere that there’s a doctor or a hospital, so you can work anywhere in the world.

According to the 2005 census from the American Academy of Physician Assistants, just over 56 percent of PAs worked in the offices and clinics of physicians, and 36 percent were employed by hospitals. The remaining 8 percent are divided among public health clinics, nursing homes, schools, prisons, home health care agencies, and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. About 17 percent of all PAs provide health care to rural communities with fewer than 20,000 residents, in which physicians may be in limited supply. Work as a PA, and your travel ticket is yours to write!

The education requirements are much lighter than that of a physician proper. As of 2006, there are more than 130 accredited PA programs in existence in the United States. They are all accredited by a single governing body: the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). A majority of them are master’s degree programs for one of MS, MPAS, or MHS, but some are available for an undergraduate major. Some of these undergraduate programs are making a transition to graduate level training, so ask around about changing requirements. The certification is also done by one single certifying body, the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA). So your direction as a physician’s assistant is clear!

PAs practice medicine, perform medical histories and examinations, order treatments, interpret diagnostic tests, diagnose acute and chronic illnesses, prescribe medication, perform invasive and noninvasive procedures, refer patients to specialists when it’s appropriate and provide first assistance in surgery. The education of a physician assistant is a mostly generalist approach, modeled after the medical school curriculum. PAs may practice in general medicine, medical specialty, or surgical specialty. Flexibility is another huge career perk. Due to their broad-based medical education, PA’s can change specialties and have the ability to work throughout their career in different specialties. The one unbreakable rule is that PAs must always work under the supervision of a physician.

Hopefully, working under supervision won’t mean having a nitpicker looking over your shoulder every minute of the day. That’s about the worst that can happen to you in this line of work, but it’s bound to be a rare thing. After all, the whole point is that you’re there to help a physician; by definition they are too busy to see to everything themselves.

The flexibility of this career ensures that you can go where you want and do what interests you. You can go on into specialties and subspecialties as your tastes permit. You can “inherit” a specialty from any physician you’re working under. Because your duties are lighter, you can continue your education while you work. And you are almost guaranteed to be a able to find work, so you’re not likely to be stuck someplace that you’ve decided isn’t to your liking.

At the same time, this isn’t to be looked down upon as a ‘candy striper’ type of job. As a physician assistant, you are practicing real medicine. You’re present in the clinic, the ER, the maternity ward, the private practice office, and the surgery. You get to make the diagnosis and prescribe the treatment, putting your training and skills to good use. In fact, this is known as a medium-difficult job. You will find challenges in this field and never have a chance to become bored.

Of course, we should consider the community. The AAPA (the American Academy of Physician Assistants) maintains an expansive website, with news, information, certification assistance, job info, and tons of databases. Forums and clubs for physician assistants are never hard to find, both on the Internet and in large cities. PAs, having the flexibility to swim with the current, really get around and get a wide range of experiences. As compared to a physician, who is more likely to be required to stay put for most of their career, a group of physician assistants is more likely to contain the one person who knows more about what’s really going on.

Historically, physician assistants have been dispatched to the battlefield. The first physician assistants started in the Vietnam war – and yes, since you asked, M*A*S*H is still a favorite TV show in the culture. But signing up for military duty as a physician assistant is an excellent way to live the war without being on the front lines. As the military saying goes, you’ll be “in the rear with the gear”, providing your essential services right where they’re needed most. This is another example of how a physician assistant career can mix and match with any secondary ambition you might have. The only real downside of the career is the comparative salary of a physician assistant to a physician, but consider that you have a much smaller personal investment in it and can always continue your education on the job to branch to a full physician.

Today if we have to look for the most sought after career in the health care industry, then the answer will be
medical assistant Salary wise it is one of the most lucrative career options with a number of jobs available at many big hospitals that pay big salaries. It is not only the most lucrative career option but also the most challenging and respectable professions as well. Being a medical assistant demands a lot of dedication and responsibility. If you have this in you and want to make loads of money as well then join, a good
medical assistant training school like The Manhattan Institute.

The Manhattan Institute is one of the leading medical assistant schools in the US providing best theoretical and hand on medical assistant training. For admission in the institute you can contact them on net through their website www.manhattaninstitute.com by filling up a simple registration form. Once you submit the form online, the staff at The Manhattan Institute will get in touch with you and will guide you through the admission process. You can also make a phone call at The Manhattan Institute and fix an appointment to visit medical assistant school and discuss the admission process in person.

Medical assistants provide various clinical and administrative duties which may vary depending upon the size of the organization. The Manhattan Institute offer most sophisticated clinical
medical assistant training where they teach aseptic technique, specimens’ collection, reading signs, phlebotomy, performing EKG tests, maintaining records of immunization etc. The medical assistants graduating from The Manhattan Institute are also well versed with various administrative and clerical duties like admission of patients, coding (procedural and diagnostic), scheduling inpatient and outpatients, Manage accounts (banking, payrolls, payables and receivables), medical transcription etc. Medical assistant courses provide an advanced training in filing insurance claim submissions, third party insurance and claim reimbursements, which provide a clear edge to medical assistant students of The Manhattan Institute over students of other institutes.

The physician assistant’s profession has existed since 1965 after the first PA program was offered at Duke University. At present, there are over 135 training modules in this field. Such is a testimony that the demand for this job continues to increase.

Most of these programs require its applicants to have a prior two-year college education and some working experience in the health care industry. Examples of jobs in the health care field include emergency medical technician, ambulance attendant, licensed practical nurse and health educator. Due to further intensified competition, most PA programs require the applicants to have a bachelor’s degree in any fields and about four years of experience in the wellness industry.

Most members of this profession are males. Nevertheless, the number of females has increased nowadays as 58% of all active PAs are females. Physician assistants’ roles are legally associated with a supervising physician. They can perform most tasks traditionally restricted to be done by physicians. These include such tasks as taking the patient’s medical history, examining and treating patients, treating minor injuries, providing injections, counselling patients, interpreting laboratory tests and performing therapies.

A majority of these professionals practise within primary care areas. About 28% of these involve in family practice. Other common areas of practice include emergency medicine, general surgery and other surgical sub-specialities. Not all professionals assume clinical role as some are involved in research, teaching, administration and other non-clinical roles.

Like many professionals, PAs are regulated at different levels. While licensing is done on the state level, certification is done on the national level. This certification requires potential physician assistants to pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Exam (PANCE), an exam that consists of 360 multiple-choice questions.