This course is offered through UpSkill NIMAA. Click here for more information on UpSkill NIMAA.

Course Information

This course is designed to enhance the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of existing health professionals (especially medical assistants) in the way a robust immunization program can strengthen the immunity of the participant’s community.  The course begins by reviewing the six rights of medication administration including needle size selection, and ways to comfort patients during injections.  It also examines the role of standing orders in improving immunization rates for a practice, as well as proper storage of vaccines, including ways to determine par levels.  Additionally, the sessions focus on the individual vaccines and proper ages and intervals needed for valid administration.  The course concludes by examining ways to provide education to vaccine-hesitant families and a patient case that helps participants see the elements covered in the course through the lens of patient care instead of in a topical manner. 

This course is designed to: 

• Provide a deep appreciation and understanding of immunizations. 
• Build the relevant knowledge, skills, and attitudes for working as a medical assistant with a high functioning immunization program. 
• Offer resources to learn more about this topic. 

Target Audience

This activity is appropriate for medical assistants and other care team professionals.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to: 

• Define the concept of a robust immunization program. 
• Describe the ways to ensure proper injection administration. 
• Demonstrate understanding of each vaccine type and for which population the vaccine should be used. 
• Demonstrate understanding of proper storage techniques, what to do when temperatures fall outside of range, and why proper storage is vital for promoting immunity.   
• Discuss best practices, potential pitfalls, challenges, and barriers to promoting immunizations. 

Prerequisites

There are no pre-requisites for enrollment in this course. However, this course is designed to benefit participants who are already engaged in health professional work, specifically primary care.  Thus, it is highly recommended that participants be health professionals currently working in a primary care setting. 

Method of Instruction

This is a full distance delivery course. All content is delivered asynchronously via the Learning Management System (LMS). The course is organized into 11 self-paced sessions. Each session is designed to take approximately one hour to complete with the course totaling 11 hours. Sessions build on one another, and thus are sequential. The work of each session involves the participant completing a brief knowledge assessment before reviewing the content. This is followed by exploring the content in videos, slides, documents, and other materials. Participants then demonstrate what they have learned in an activity as well as share reflections and questions about the content with fellow participants. Finally, participants complete a knowledge assessment to understand what they have learned in the session. 

Required Hardware/Software

This course does not have a textbook requirement. All required course content materials are included in the LMS within the lesson content for each session. Additional optional learning resources are listed in the lesson information for each session in the course syllabus. To be able to access and complete all the required course items, all participants are expected to have access to a personal computer meeting the specifications below. 

Minimum Hardware Requirements 

• Personal computers should be five years old or newer, when possible 
• 2.4 GHz or faster processor  
• 4 GB or more of RAM 
• 300 GB or larger hard drive  
• 500MB or better video card capable of 1920x1080 resolution or higher  
• Sound card with speakers, headphones and microphone  
• Monitor/display video card capable of 800x600 dpi with 256 colors  

Highly Recommended

• Printer 
• CD-RW, DVD-RW or USB mass-storage device (recommended)  

Minimum Software Requirements

• Operating Systems (one of the following): 
  • Windows 7 and newer   
  • Mac OS X 10.6 and newer  
  • Linux - Chrome OS  
• Supported browsers: Internet Explorer (11) or Edge, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox (current and first previous major releases of each browser)  
• JavaScript enabled  
• Minimum Internet Speed:  
  • Bandwidth of 512 Kbps (i.e. basic DSL) minimum   
  • Bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps minimum to support good video streaming  
• Unrestricted access to YouTube and Vimeo