It is legally inadvisable for student medical assistants who are on their externship/practicum to include any unrecognized initialism, such as the initials “SMA” (for “Student Medical Assistant”), after their names. Because “SMA” is not a recognized credential for medical assistants and there is no recognized credential given to medical assisting students just for being a student, externing students who insert any initialism after their names could cause confusion.
Using an unrecognized credential is an important issue for the medical assisting profession because of the large number of credentials and initialisms that currently exist in medical assisting.
If a practicum site strongly prefers that the externing medical assisting students identify themselves in some distinctive way, it would be preferable to have the students use the phrase “Student Med Asst” or some other type of designation.
Legal Eye 
However, I believe it should be discouraged that “MA” be used at all since “MA” is not a recognized credential for a medical assistant. It should only be used after your name if you have a Master of Art degree. So many in our state use “MA” incorrectly.
Thank you, Melinda. I agree with you. Don
Donald A. Balasa, JD, MBA
Chief Executive Officer, Legal Counsel
American Association of Medical Assistants
Ph: 800/228-2262 | Fax: 312/899-1259 | http://www.aama-ntl.org
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