This past January, the Fall 2019 medical assistant class of East Los Angeles Occupational Center (ELAOC), one of LA Unified’s Division of Adult and Career Education schools, took the certified clinical medical assistant (CCMA) certification and every student passed! While CCMA certification is not a state requirement, many employers are choosing candidates who have passed it. This is Ms. Neal’s second group of students that have achieved 100% pass rate for the CCMA certification. Instructor Neal told us, “I am extremely proud of this group. They worked very hard and put in many outside hours to study for the test.” She then added, “In addition to this certification, seven of the students have opted to take the California Certifying Board for Medical Assistant (CCBMA) examination, which will in turn make them both national and state certified.”
One of her former students, Kimberly Arazo (Fall 2018), was Ms. Neal’s first student to become certified in both the national (CCMA) and state exam (CCBMA). Kimberly is now working for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS) as a medical assistant and was able to negotiate a higher salary, in part because of her dual certification. Current student Jenny Caceres mentioned, “Passing the CCMA opened more doors of opportunities for us to work across the nation. It makes us official medical assistants with this certification.”
Please join us in congratulating Instructor Neal and her students for this significant accomplishment and wishing the best to our hard-working students taking the CCBMA in the next few weeks.