Practicum Requirements

All students enrolled in the Medical Assistant program are required to attend a mandatory practicum orientation prior to being placed at a practicum site. Students will be notified well in advance of the day, time, and location of the orientation meeting. Failure to attend this mandatory orientation will result in withdrawal or failure of MED2280.

To pass the practicum course, students must remain at the practicum site for the duration of their scheduled assignment, accumulate the total number of prescribed hours as outlined in the Medical Assistant Practicum Handbook, and successfully complete all course requirements. If, for some reason, a student is unable to remain at the practicum site for the duration of his/her assignment, the student must contact the instructor and the practicum coordinator immediately.

Medical Assistant students are only eligible to take the Practicum course twice throughout the Medical Assistant program. Medical Assistant students who receive a grade of D or below in the Practicum course, or who withdraw from the course, may repeat that course. Students who receive a grade of D or below in the repeated course, or who withdraw for a second time, will be dismissed automatically from the Medical Assistant program.

Policies and Processes for Assignment of Clinical Experiences

The Practicum Coordinator (PC), working collaboratively with the Career Services Department, will select ambulatory healthcare facilities that agree to provide a supervised training experience for students enrolled in the Medical Assistant program. Practicum sites are selected based on the ability of the sites to provide an atmosphere that allows students to ask questions, sharpen skills, and be coached with the goal of improved performance. The Practicum experience is designed to complement the concepts and materials which were presented to students during the lecture and laboratory portions of their program.   

The PC and Career Services staff members will meet with students the semester prior to their enrollment in the Practicum course to coordinate practicum placement. The placement can be made within a 30-mile radius of the student’s home campus and depends upon site availability. Practicum sites are selected and assigned under the same guidelines utilized in the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

Once students are placed at the practicum site, the PC will provide oversight of student assessments and will meet with the site representatives regularly. The PC will discuss each student’s progress at least once during the student’s practicum experience, and more frequently if necessary. The PC is always available to students and site representatives to discuss any concerns about student attendance, performance, or professionalism. 

Assessment during the practicum experience is ongoing. Practicum site supervisors will complete weekly site evaluations, which are signed by both the supervisor and the student. The PC and faculty member assigned to the Medical Assistant Capstone and Practicum Course (MED2280) will review these evaluations to ensure students are meeting the goals and expectations of the Practicum experience. At the conclusion of the 165-hour practicum, site supervisors will also complete a final evaluation, which identifies students’ strengths and weaknesses. Site supervisors will review these evaluations with the students, and both parties must sign the document before it is submitted to the PC for review.  

In addition, students will complete weekly journals reflecting on their experiences at the practicum site; and those weekly journals will be reviewed and signed by both the site supervisor and student before being submitted to the PC. All performance evaluations and weekly journals will be retained by the Program and will be stored in Perceptive Content, an electronic document management system used by the College to store images of documents.