My Starting Point – Chelsea Ruiz – Into My Core Classes

Hello Carrington flock! Student blogger Chelsea Ruiz here again. I’m studying Medical Assisting at the Tucson campus and I’m passing on some of my experiences.

Last time I talked about the FA100 program and my teachers, so today I want to talk to you about a couple of things I learned in my first core classes.

First Injections Done

You may remember from an earlier blog how worried I was about giving my first injections. Well here’s an update! It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be.

We were doing intradermal injections, and I was actually excited to do it! Although it was simple, I was excited to get that first time out of the way.

There were lots of girls in my class who were like “practice on me, I don’t care”, so I wasn’t really worried about hurting them.

I was still a little nervous the night before, but not as nervous as I was about it weeks ago!

Medical Billing & Coding

I felt really good walking into my first core class just after Easter. The FA100 class had prepared me well; I was accustomed to being back in school and I was up for the challenge.

Carrington programs are a mix of labs and lectures. The first core class included Medical Billing and Coding [MBC], so our lab work was often practical things like filling out insurance forms. I have to say that a career in MBC isn’t for me – I found it pretty boring. If you’re interested in bookwork and numbers then it may be a perfect job for you, but unfortunately I don’t have that kind of attention span.

I had no idea that there’s so much to insurance and billing & coding. Although it wasn’t fun for me, it’s really important stuff to know because many people are concerned with how they’re going to pay when they visit a medical office. I knew nothing about insurance before; there’s a lot more to it than I thought.

My grandma is about to turn 65; she’s getting ready for the Medicare switch. Now I feel that I know all about it and can help her with it all. I’ve been explaining different things to her, like what Medicare supplement (Medigap) insurance is. It’s always good when the stuff you learn can benefit your family!

Now that I have a better understanding of it, I’ll feel much more comfortable explaining things to people – people like my grandma! It’s an important subject to learn, but I’m glad it was at the beginning of the program, because from here on out it’s going to be all the fun back office stuff.

Next Up – Cardiology

This next term we will be learning about cardiology, so I’m sure our labs will be a lot different – I know that we’ll be doing blood draws for sure. We’ve all been talking about how excited we are for Cardiology. This is the big one; blood draws are very important part of being a Medical Assistant. It’s something that we all need to know, and be good at, if we want to be successful in this career.

Thanks for following along! Read my next blog in a week or two!