Medical assistants practice key patient assessment skills

Medical assisting is one of the fastest growing careers in healthcare. They are often the first healthcare professionals that you meet when you visit your primary care physician. Their job is to gather a variety of assessment data about you (vital signs) so that your doctor can help you make informed healthcare decisions.

One of the important ways that medical assistants collect data is by taking your blood pressure. A patient’s blood pressure can often help determine if a patient has hidden health issues such as hypertension. If untreated, conditions such as this could lead to a heart attack.

The students in Big Bend Community College’s medical assisting program spend hours in and outside of class mastering the art of taking accurate blood pressures as well as gaining proficiency in other assessment skills (as seen in the attached picture). Medical Assistant Program Coordinator, Kyla Ohs is proud of her students and shares that “we are graduating competent and confident medical assistants because of the emphasis that we place on mastering theoretical concepts through rigorous hands on application.”

Our newly redesigned labs at BBCC help achieve this goal by giving students the space, equipment, and support that they need to perfectly achieve accurate patient assessment skills.

To find out more about the Medical Assisting program at BBCC, please contact Kyla Ohs at kylao@bigbend.edu. To find out more our high fidelity medical labs, please contact Andrea Elliott at (509) 793-2125 or andreae@bigbend.edu.