Happy Thanksgiving from the Allen School Blog

Happy Thanksgiving medical billing online studentsHappy Thanksgiving from the Allen School Blog Staff.  We’re giving thanks for another year of helping people begin new careers by studying medical billing classes online with the Allen School.  We’re also very grateful for all those who study to earn nursing assistant certification and medical office assistant training at our ground campuses.  We’re thankful for friends, food, health, song, faith, opportunity and all the blessings the season has to offer.  We’ll be back next week with more fun and interesting posts. – The Editors

Medical Assistant Training Wintertime Pro Tip

pro tip for nursing assistantsHere’s a little factoid of significant value to anyone who is either seeking certified medical assistant training or is already employed as a certified nurse assistant in the colder latitudes.  For those of you studying at the Allen School in NYC, this includes you.

Now it may be bizarrely 65 degrees as I write this two days before Thanksgiving, but all last week it was down into the twenties and teens with the wind chill factor.  And the meteorologist says we can expect the old Polar Vortex to emerge again frequently this winter, portending significant snowstorms and bitter cold.  So here’s the pro tip from a layman who has probably made this mistake many times.

Never try to warm frostbite with friction.  We’ve all done this.  Walking inside with cold hands from being stuck outside in the freezing cold, we’re inclined to rub them believing the friction will warm the skin and promote blood flow in the extremities.  However, this blogger just learned that this is exactly the wrong thing to do for frostbite. Read the following story from LifeHacker about the proper thing to do for frostbite.


How Medical Assistants Explain Scary Medical Jargon to Patients

nursing assistants speak jargonYou can be sure a first-time mother will be beside herself when the doctor says her baby suffers from “pyrexia”.  The worker with high deductible health insurance is worried about the out of pocket cost of treatment for his “recurring epistaxis”. The medical industry is probably the worst of all industries when it comes to using jargon.   Besides holding a medical assistant certification from the Allen School, having a good medical jargon vocabulary is probably one of the best advantages you can have as a candidate for employment in doctors’ offices or hospitals.   Calm these patients down by being able to explain that pyrexia means fever and epistaxis means nosebleed and you’ll have a happy patient and a happy employer. Iodine.com is a website whose mission is to build tools that help people understand their health and improve their healthcare choices.  It offers easy to understand info about drugs and medical products new and old.  Perhaps the neatest thing there is their new medical translator tool.  A plug-in for the Chrome web browser, this free tool helps decipher the quasi-Latin, the marketing use, and other strange linguistic emanations issuing forth from the medical industry. While the site is really designed as a resource to be used by consumers who get an increasing amount of info on their health (diagnostics and more) via the Internet (WebMD and others for example), it can be a great tool for students working toward their medical assistants certifications.  Learn more at the Allen School of Health Sciences today!


Happy Medical Office Assistants Succeed

unhappiness doesnt suit medical office assistantsEven with a top-notch medical office assistants degree like the one you’ll get at Allen School, it is more difficult to succeed in a career (and life in general) if you’re unhappy all the time.  Think about it, we’ve all known that perennially dour person.  You know the one.  He or she is always wearing a scowl, has nothing positive to say about anyone or anything, always ready to talk trash or say things to deflate the achievements of others.  Real Debbie or Donnie Downers. As it turns out, those sad sacks fall into their depressing behavior – whether they realize it or not – by practicing a set of 7 habits that all chronically unhappy people seem to have in common.  Life coach, speaker and writer, Tamara Star published a piece on the Huffington Post recently called The 7 Habits of Chronically Unhappy People, listing these 7 deadly (to your happiness) habits.  Here is the list of seven habits that may make you an unhappy person:
  1. Your default belief is that life is hard.
  2. You believe most people can’t be trusted.
  3. You concentrate on what’s wrong in this world versus what’s right.
  4. You compare yourself to others and harbor jealousy
  5. You strive to control your life.
  6. You consider your future with worry and fear.
  7. You fill your conversations with gossip and complaints.
Nobody wants to work with or otherwise be near to people who are chronically sad, spiteful, bitter or generally unhappy.  Certainly, no sick patient wants to be attended to by medical office assistants who are obviously unhappy.  Understanding how our habits may unconsciously drive our behavior is key to moderating feelings of unhappiness.  Since you’re considering a career in care giving, it may pay to read this article and guard against habits that may impact your ability to be effective in your chosen field.  

Diseases Come and Go – Medical Assistants Always Remain

illnessesFound this fascinating graphic that helps visualize the top 10 causes of death in 1900 and again in 2010.  Put side by side it is just amazing to think how many once-fatal illnesses medical science has eradicated in the course of the last 100 years.  The same post at Sploid.com (a favorite geeky site of mine) also shows top risk factors and other relevant information in side-by-side comparisons between 1900 and 2010.  Again we can see the role of the medical field in helping to change public policy and raise awareness of behaviors that are dangerous to our collective health.

Unfortunately, looking at these visualizations, we also learn that people still suffer and die at about the same rate even though the causes of their ailments may have changed.  This is a less unfortunate piece of information though if you’re someone pursuing (or considering) a career in the medical field.  Doctors, nurses, and medical assistants remain in very high demand because illness never sleeps.  It may be beat back on one front, but always emerges elsewhere to cause suffering and pain.  This is why nursing assistant training is a wise choice career-wise.

I wonder what this chart will look like in the year 2100.  What incurable diseases currently ravaging humanity will be rendered harmless.  How we regard smallpox will surely be how humanity in 2100 regards Cancer or heart disease.  One thing is for certain, however.  Regardless of how many ailments we cure with science, there will always be others requiring the care and expertise of doctors, nurses, and medical assistants.


Don’t Forget to Vote Today Nursing Assistant Trainees

Election_buttonOK, well neither should medical assistant trainees nor medical billing and coding students forget to vote.  Really, anyone reading this blog post needs to know that today is Election Day here in the US and the mid-term elections include races for every seat in the US House of Representatives.  Here in New York, the Governor is up for re-election. It is your quintessential right as an American to exercise your franchise and go to the polls to make your voice heard.  Local races for state assembly, judicial offices and many ballot initiatives may also be on your local ballot.  Here’s a great site for information on every race state wide in New York.  If you haven’t yet read up on the issues and candidates, here’s your chance to “cram” for the exam. Whatever you do, make sure you get out and vote.  It is your civic duty as an American and hundreds of thousands have died to protect your right to do so.  Happy Election Day from your friends here at the Allen School Blog!

Online Medical Billing Students, Don’t Be Held Ransom

ransumYou study online medical billing.  You’re computer savvy and don’t go anywhere without your laptop, tablet and smart phone.  You’re the person your friends and relatives call when their computers are giving them problems.  So you likely know a lot about how to treat computer viruses (like your classmates studying to become nursing assistants know about viruses affecting humans).  But, online medical billing students, do you know about ransomware? Yes, ransomware, as if you didn’t have enough to worry about these days.  This new, emerging health threat (to computers, not people) is a piece of malicious software that once inside your machine, captures every single file in your computer and encrypts it using military grade encryption.  Then it launches a notepad page with the ransom note, demanding $500 to restore access to your files.  If you ignore it, after a month, the ransom goes up to $1000.  Sounds like a nightmare no? Well, Mr. or Ms. online medical billing student, you may already know (or at least have an idea) of what the cure is to this meddlesome and malicious infection.  The cure for ransomware is the gold, old fashioned, offsite backup service.  You may know these by the commercial names, Mozy, Carbonite and others.  These services charge you a small annual fee and they regularly backup your files and file structure to their protected data centers.  If your machine ever dies, is stolen or even falls prey to the scammers behind ransomware (who have netted more tha $1,000,000 to date) you simply reformat your machine and download all your files back from the backup and the scammers get NOTHING!  Check out Backblaze.com for a very cost effective backup solution that costs only $50 a year.

Why its an Interesting Year to get a Nursing Assistant Education

flu-or-ebolaGetting a nursing assistant education is always an incredibly interesting thing to do.  It is also challenging, lucrative, and rewarding, but I digress.  This year, those about to earn their nursing assistant certification are going to be entering this already dynamic and action-packed field at a time of heightened interest. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), hospitals in the US are gearing up for a significantly busier than usual flu season.  Stretching every year from November through February, flu season keeps hospitals and doctors’ offices busy with sufferers coming in for treatment.  But with the Ebola scare rippling through the American media today, hospitals are expecting a much greater than usual volume of flu sufferers coming to visit.  Because Ebola symptoms are similar to the symptoms brought on by influenza – fever, sweats, weakness, vomiting, aches, etc. – a public already worried about Ebola is expected to visit hospitals when flu symptoms emerge. It bears noting that Ebola concerns are widely blown out of proportion and the number of people who die each winter from influenza far outstrips the number expected to contract Ebola, the widespread awareness of Ebola will prompt many who might ordinarily suffer through the flu at home to seek medical attention this time. The public will be relying on the medical practitioners at hospitals and doctors’ offices to help keep the fear in perspective, letting patients know that it is extremely unlikely their case of the flu is anything other than what it is.  However, with the media circus going at full tilt, it promises to be an interesting year in the ER and other front line medical treatment centers. An old Chinese proverb states, “May you live in interesting times”.  If you’re about to embark on your new career as a nursing assistant, you most certainly will be starting your career at a very interesting juncture.

5 Best Things to Say During Medical Assistant Job Interviews

nursing assistant Typically, I encounter posts written at job seekers’ sites talking about how best to answer certain common job interview questions.  Things like, “Where do you see yourself in five years” or “What do you consider your greatest strengths and weaknesses” are typical and have been discussed ad nauseum.

Today, however, I came across a piece at Monster.com that listed the following Top 5 Things to Say During your Job Interview.  This was a refreshing take on the threadbare discussion topic because it provides simple statements (and a couple of questions) you can inject into the conversation with your interviewer.  These five things all work to put you forward in the best possible light and provide you with the opportunity to segue into the kinds of discussions an interviewer’s (often hackneyed) questions are designed to elicit. “Let me tell you about a time that I solved that problem.” This statement, followed by a story about how you achieved in a past capacity, demonstrates that you’re results-oriented, not just a sum of your list of capabilities.

“Can you clarify? Asking for clarification demonstrates that you’re thoughtful and careful and wish to have all the information you may need to answer a challenge before you get started.

“I read about that project on your website.” This statement clearly and proactively demonstrates that you’re an inquisitive self-starter.  These lists always admonish readers to do some research on the hiring organization before going to the interview.  This simple sentence makes clear you did your due diligence.

“What made you decide to work here?” When asked if you have any questions for the interviewer, it is always a best practice to have some thoughtful questions ready to ask.  Asking the interviewer what drove their decision to work for this company turns the tables.  However, it is a fair question and one that may yield some insight you wouldn’t have come away with otherwise.

“I’d love the chance to join this team!”

There is no ‘I’ in the team says the old axiom.  Making this statement demonstrates that you bring a team-working ethic to the job and shows you’re ready to jump in and work together with others.

I loved reading this list and I am confident these tips will come in handy at your next job interview.

Hey Online Medical Billing Students – Protect Your Home Network

medical billing onlineStudying from home with Allen School Online is a greatly convenient way to earn an exciting new career.  However, like anything else, this activity comes with some risks.  Maintaining a robust computer network at home – something that is common among online medical billing students – requires knowledge of some basic network security practices to ensure your computers aren’t hacked by thieves or scammers. Yahoo! Tech columnist Dan Tynan published a list of 10 ways you can protect your home network from unwanted intrusion.  Some of these are pretty easy and well known like ensuring you have activated the security features of your wireless router and keeping your anti-virus software up to date.  Others are less intuitive but no less useful like using two-factor authentication and being cognizant of what you share on your social media sites. I highly recommend every online medical billing student take a few moments to read Tynan’s excellent article and make sure to keep your networks safe and sound from hackers and cyber thieves.  This way you’ll spend your time studying for your certification and not cleaning viruses from your hard drive.