Five Popular High School Medical Assisting Textbooks
- Medical Assisting: Administrative and Clinical Procedures
- Clinical Procedures for Medical Assistants
- Pearson’s Comprehensive Medical Assisting
- Today’s Medical Assistant
- Kinn’s Medical Assisting Fundamentals
Today, students are flocking to CTE medical assistant programs.
As these classes grow in popularity, health science teachers need the best resources to help prepare students for careers in medical assisting.
With dozens of medical assisting textbooks out there, how do you know which one is right for your program?
Overall, there are five common textbooks used in CTE medical assisting courses.
The top medical assisting textbooks (in no particular order) are:
- Medical Assisting: Administrative and Clinical Procedures
- Clinical Procedures for Medical Assistants
- Pearson’s Comprehensive Medical Assisting
- Today’s Medical Assistant
- Kinn’s Medical Assisting Fundamentals
In this blog, you’ll learn the details of each textbook to help you decide if one is right for you and your students.
1. Medical Assisting: Administrative and Clinical Procedures
- Authors: Kathryn Booth, Leesa
Whicker, and Terri Wyman - Copyright: 2017
- Retail Price: $180 hardcover, $135 loose-leaf
Medical Assisting: Administrative and Clinical Procedures is designed to teach fundamental medical assisting skills illustrated by scenarios a medical assistant may encounter in the workplace.
The textbook has 58 chapters about medical assisting skills, which are organized into nine units:
- Medical Assisting as a Career
- Safety and the Environment
- Communication
- Administrative Practices
- Applied Anatomy and Physiology
- Infection Control and Clinical Practices
- Diagnostics
- Assisting in Therapies
- Medical Assisting Practice
Overall, each chapter highlights a variety of concepts and skills ranging from administrative tasks to hands-on clinical procedures.
If you’re focused on only teaching clinical medical assisting procedures, you can probably skip chapters related to administrative tasks.
This is especially useful if your class has a end-of-program assessment like the NHA CCMA certification, since you’ll touch on some of the same information found in the exam.
On the flip side, if you’re preparing students to become medical administrative assistants, this textbook has a lot of unrelated procedural information.
As a result, it’s not a great resource if your students are going for their CMAA certifications at the end of your class. The textbook simply won’t give them the information they need to succeed.
If you teach a course that covers both administrative and clinical medical assisting, this book will provide the best of both worlds!
However, it’s important to note that this text was published in 2017. That means it’s a few years out of date -- something that can make a big difference in the healthcare industry!
2. Clinical Procedures for Medical Assistants
- Author: Kathy Bonewit-West
- Copyright: 2017
- Retail Price: $126
The Clinical Procedures for Medical Assistants textbook contains 23 chapters related to common procedures that medical assistants complete in their daily work.
Overall the textbook discusses more than 120 procedures, including:
- Measuring vital signs
- Phlebotomy procedures
- Minor office surgery
- Physical exams
- Eye and ear assessments
- Urinalysis
- Prenatal care
These procedures are presented in a step-by-step format, with illustrations and diagrams showing how to properly perform them.
Any teacher who needs a book with detailed clinical medical assisting procedures could find this text useful.
Similarly to the previous book on the list, this one was also published in 2017. So you may need to review the procedures and make adjustments to align with more current processes.
3. Pearson’s Comprehensive Medical Assisting
- Authors: Nina Beaman, Kristiana D. Routh, Lorraine M. Papazian-Boyce, Ron Maly, and Jaime Nguyen
- Copyright: 2018
- Retail Price: Unlisted
Pearson’s Comprehensive Medical Assisting is designed to help teach both hands-on procedures and soft skills in medical assisting classes.
The text is made up of 59 chapters across five units:
- Introduction to Health Care
- Administrative Medical Assisting
- Anatomy and Physiology
- Clinical Medical Assisting
- Career Assistance
In total, you’ll find 237 step-by-step administrative and clinical procedures, which is more than any other book on our list!
If your goal is to teach as many medical assisting procedures as possible, Pearson's Comprehensive Medical Assisting could be the perfect fit!
However, the lack of clear pricing is unusual. If you want to get detailed pricing information on this textbook, you’ll have to contact the publisher directly.
This could be an issue because first-year health science instructors aren’t always clear on the funding that they have available.
So if you find yourself in that boat, you may have to dive into your different funding opportunities before you get a quote from Pearson about this textbook’s cost.
4. Today’s Medical Assistant
- Authors: Kathy Bonewit-West,
Sue Hunt, and Edith Applegate - Copyright: 2015
- Retail Price: $131
Today’s Medical Assistant includes both clinical and administrative procedures that medical assistants will need to know on the job.
In addition, it majorly focuses on anatomy and physiology to ensure medical assisting students know everything about the body systems prior to jumping into clinical work.
Overall, you’ll find 51 chapters across four distinct sections:
- Introduction to Medical Assisting
- Anatomy and Physiology
- Clinical Component
- Administrative Component
The layout of each section and chapter presents information in a consistent way, so your students always know what to expect when starting a new topic.
This includes items such as:
- Chapter outlines
- Learning objectives
- Key terms
- Highlight boxes
- And more
Overall, any medical assisting instructor would find this text useful, however it’s important to note it was published in 2015.
That makes it the oldest textbook on our list, meaning there is bound to be outdated or missing content.
5. Kinn’s Medical Assisting Fundamentals
- Authors:
Brigitte Niedzwiecki, Julie Pepper, and P. Ann Weaver - Copyright: 2018
- Retail Price: $132
Kinn’s Medical Assisting Fundamentals introduces medical assisting concepts in a context heavily centered around anatomy and physiology.
In total, you’ll find 45 chapters, which are organized into seven units:
- Medical Terminology, Anatomy and Physiology
- Professional Medical Assistant
- Administrative Ambulatory Care
- Basic Clinical Procedures
- Advanced Clinical Procedures
- Medical Laboratory
- Employment Seeking
Each chapter in the book is centered around a scenario to help students understand each concept and skill in a real-world context.
What’s great about Kinn’s Medical Assisting Fundamentals is the publisher took time to note which medical assisting certifications it is aligned to, such as NHA CCMA, NHA CMAA, and AMCA CMAC!
So if your medical assisting students want to become certified, this textbook could be a great addition to your curriculum.
Plus, this textbook is ideal for your students if you know you want them to take a certification exam, but you haven’t decided which one!
With this one textbook, you cover a lot of your bases with one quick purchase!
Which Medical Assisting Textbook Is Right for You?
Though it’s not possible to review every medical assisting textbook in the world, this is at least a start!
As you learn more about each resource, keep in mind that many teachers use more than just a traditional textbook to teach medical assisting courses.
In fact, some medical assisting instructors have found that digital curriculum works better for their classroom than paper textbooks.
Want to learn about other medical assistant curriculum options?
Learn how digital curriculum stacks up against health science textbooks:
