Medical assistants must scrupulously avoid conveying the message that they are nursing personnel or members of any profession other than medical assisting.
It is unethical, illegal, and a disservice to the medical assisting profession for medical assistants to refer to themselves as “nurses,” “office nurses,” “doctors’ nurses,” or any other generic term that even remotely implies that medical assistants are nurses.
Review the supporting evidence within excerpts from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing NCSBN Model Act (2012) and several states’ nurse practice acts in the May/June 2019 Public Affairs article, “Medical Assistants Must Not Refer to Themselves as ‘Nurses,’” on the AAMA website.
