A Clinical Nurse Educator’s Development and Implementation of a Medical Assistant Training Program to Support the Ambulatory Care Needs of a Healthcare System

Learning outcome: Understand how to create and implement a medical assistant training program to meet ambulatory care workforce needs.
Background: Medical assistants (MAs) provide clinical support in ambulatory care offices and play a crucial role in patient care. An organization identified an increased workforce need within ambulatory care offices due to a minimal number of MA graduates in the community. Approximately 50% of all new MA hires were leaving the organization within the first six months of employment due to a lack of career readiness. The executive leadership team envisioned building an MA training program to standardize training and meet the ambulatory care workforce needs of the medical group. The leadership team hired an experienced clinical nurse educator to develop and implement an internal MA training program.
Purpose: The purpose of developing and implementing a full-time paid MA training program was to meet workforce needs, increase the career readiness of new MAs and employee retention rates, and provide quality ambulatory care services to the community. Building a sustainable workforce that can support growth of the healthcare organization has the potential to improve patient access to care in underserved areas.
Methods: The development of the MA training program required an in-depth evaluation of MAs throughout all ambulatory care service lines. The program was designed to be an accelerated program with educational material focused on career readiness for an entry level MA that could be employed in any ambulatory care specialty office. The organization hired internal and external candidates into the MA program who may have little to no medical background. Education was presented using multiple modalities and consists of didactic education, skills training, and clinical experiences.
Outcomes: The MA program began in May of 2020 and has graduated a total of 561 MAs. It has become the primary source of new MA employees, MA retention rates have improved, and ambulatory care services have expanded to underserved communities. One-year retention rates average 78% and two-year retention rates average 67%. Higher retention rates occur with internal employees who join the MA program and are most likely due to organizational loyalty and prior exposure to health care. There have been 16 graduates from the program who have continued their education by obtaining their limited medical radiography (LMR) license. There have been seven graduates who have grown in their career to become nurses within the organization. Five graduates have moved into ambulatory care leadership roles. The creation of an internal MA training program has proven to be an effective way to meet workforce needs, support the mission of the organization, and allow for employee professional growth.
Implications: Flexibility during the implementation phase was needed to ensure meaningful changes were made to the program through collaborative partnerships with ambulatory care leadership, experienced clinical staff, executive leadership, and talent acquisition. A lack of data collection ability made it challenging to make direct correlations between education and patient outcomes. Looking toward the future, the success of the program may be used to help support the creation of other allied health training programs within the organization.