By Lori Nichols, MSPH, NIMAA Director of Business and Partnership Development Healthcare experts predict that the primary care workforce in the United States is nearing a crisis due to a decreasing proportion of medical school graduates opting for careers in primary care. Couple this with a rising number of providers nearing retirement, and we are […]

By Lori Nichols, NIMAA Director of Business and Partnership Development At NIMAA, we believe that by focusing on creating equitable career pathways, eliminating barriers to employment, and contributing to a positive social return on investment, we can help achieve a critical and fundamental change. We can build health care teams back up, not only to […]

By Susan Klos, NIMAA Curriculum Director and Instructor When many of us think about school, we imagine a physical building where you can meet with the instructor in class to ask questions about assignments, or sit with peers around a table to work on a group project. Establishing a connection to instructors and peers is […]

By Dawn Chambers, NIMAA Instructor *Names have been changed for patient privacy purposes In 2010, I had just begun my career as an eager and excited Medical Assistant (MA). After only a week of working in the clinic, I was placed with a physician who primarily served the LGBTQ+ community and specialized in caring for […]

By Carolina Rose, NIMAA Distance Education Manager Now that we have a vaccine and COVID-19 herd immunity is in sight, we can all start to get excited about returning to “normal” life. While the pandemic has created a great deal of disruption in our daily lives, it has also provided opportunities for change in the […]

By Misae Vela Brol, NP, Clinica Family Health Services; NIMAA Advisory Board member Speaking from more than 15 years of experience as a Family Nurse Practitioner in Denver, CO, Medical Assistants (MA) are integral to the health care team and key to my success as a provider. A medical assistant properly trained in team-based care […]

By Lynne Jones, Executive Director of the Commission on Family Medicine The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted well-known shortfalls of the U.S. healthcare landscape, as well as helped to validate what can be accomplished when we are at our best. Let’s focus on what we know about how we are at our best as health care […]

By Suzanne Smith, Health Center Operations Division Director, Colorado Community Health Network The fact that Community Health Centers (CHCs) and the National Institute for Medical Assistant Advancement (NIMAA) share a common focus – improving the lives of community members – is no surprise, given that NIMAA was founded by two CHCs. However, it is this […]

In healthcare settings, you rarely go an hour without hearing the new buzz word “telehealth.”  It has become such a commonplace saying that we rarely stop to think about what it means and what it looks like for a patient. Telehealth is an innovative way of delivering healthcare without requiring patients to be physically present […]

By Kate Prell, Program Specialist, Recruitment and Placement, NIMAA What Is Medical Racism? Medical racism is the idea that black and other people of color have experienced care inequities due to unconscious bias and larger institutional policies. That is not to say that every provider or healthcare professional is explicitly racist but that the same […]