Welcome MAAPET Preceptors

Medical Assistant Accelerated Pathway to Employment Training Program

How is the MAAPET training program different

Employment of medical assistants is projected to grow 16 percent from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations. Traditional one or two-year medical assistant education programs will not provide enough graduates to keep up with current demand. In 2020 the Center for Healthcare Careers of Southeast Wisconsin (a non-profit healthcare workforce development collaboration, and our partner hospitals: Advocate Aurora Health, Ascension, Children’s Wisconsin, and Froedtert, created MAAPET to help address the MA shortage.

Funding for this pilot program was provided, in part, by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment. The grant allowed us to offer MAAPET training tuition-free to participants.

Unlike traditional MA programs participants are hired by your system prior to beginning instruction, they receive a training wage while attending the program.

To recruit trainees for the MAAPET program, impact the MA shortage, and increase diversity in the healthcare workforce, the Center for Healthcare Careers partners with numerous community organizations and secondary schools. As a result, 75% of our MAAPET enrollees come from underserved populations. To say that this tuition-free, paid training program is lifechanging for the trainees is an understatement!

Since the first Cohort launched in December 2020, the MAAPET program has enrolled over 100 trainees. With more than 90% of enrollees successfully completing their classroom and clinical training and beginning their MA careers.

Your Role as a Leader or Preceptor

Your employee is participating in a pilot accelerated medical assistant training program. The pilot program MAAPET (Medical Assistant Accelerated Pathway to Employment Training) is an innovative 14 week/560 hour on-the-job-training program.

Prior to being enrolled in the MAAPET program, your trainees are hired and onboarded by your system leaders. Your employee has now completed an intense 10 week/400-hour full-time lecture, lab, and hands-on classroom instruction. They are now ready to complete their four week/160 hour clinical/practicum training and experience at your facility.

Please keep in mind that these trainees have just learned in ten weeks, what would typically take one or two years to complete – empathy, patience and mentoring are keys to their success. MAAPET clinical trainees are employees of your system, unlike traditional classroom training models, MAAPET clinical trainees do not return to the MAAPET classroom upon successful completion of their clinicals – they immediately begin their careers as medical assistants with your system.

MAAPET participants that successfully complete both classroom and clinical trainings are eligible to sit for the CCMA certification exam offered by the National Healthcareer Association (NHA), 97% of MAAPET graduates that have attempted the NHA certification have passed the test.