Eligibility Requirements for Registered Medical Assistant

Acquiring an official recognition as a Registered Medical Assistant is very valuable for your future career growth in the health care industry. A lot of companies and employers prefer and at times only employs medical assistants who are holding a certification, either  a ‘Registered Medical Assistant (RMA)’ or a ‘Certified Medical Assistant (CMA)’. Hence, it is always an excellent idea to receive a certification in the medical assistance program for your future career growth. However, there are several eligibility requirements for candidates in order to apply for the certification exams in medical assistance.

• The candidate should possess a superior ethical, honest and moral personality
• The candidate should meet ‘any one’ of the eligibility pathways that are mentioned below:

Pathway 1 – Schooling

The candidate must have received a graduate recently from a recognized institution or should be planned to receive a graduation from an authorized medical assisting training institute that is attributed by an accepted local or nationalized officially recognized bureau.

Pathway 2 – Armed forces

The candidate should be a fresh graduate from or should plan to get graduation from an official health care service schooling program of the ‘United States Armed Forces’.

Pathway 3 – Professional skills and previous job experience

The candidate should have been in a medical job as a medical assistant. He/she should have been in the job for about five years within the past 7 years. In addition, he/she may have worked as a tutor in the ‘Post-secondary Medical assistant training program’ but not more than 2 years. It is crucial that the candidate provides an evidence of his high school graduation certificate or any corresponding documents as they are obligatory to attend the certification examination.

Pathway 4 – Additional acknowledged examinations and certifications

The candidate should have attended and successfully passed an additional ‘Certification’ (generalist) exam for a medical assisting association on the condition that the association examination has already been approved by the institute’s board of  executives. On the other hand, if an applicant had already met the above mentioned eligibility pathway’s (1, 2 or 3) then, he is not expected to attend or pass any examination.

Candidates who wish to apply through the eligibility pathways 1, 2 and 3 can attend and pass the suitable certification examination from a recognized institute.

Requirement annotations

• Nationalized or locally acknowledged organization: The concerned agency should be attributed by the ‘U.S. Department of education’, the ‘Council for higher education accreditation’ or it should be officially permitted by the institute’s board of executives as a minimum official recognition.
• The entire training programs must comprise at least a seven hundred and twenty clock hours or corresponding hours of training in medical assisting courses. The clock hour also includes a medical apprenticeship of minimum one hundred and sixty hours time duration.
• Candidates who wish to apply for the certification through the pathway 1 & 2, should possess a graduation in their university or school programs in the past 4 years. Candidates who are graduating more than 4 years from the application date should supply proper proof of their existing job experience.