Biannual Mock Clinic at Fort Worth Campus Brings Real-Life Healthcare Scenarios into the Classroom

Contributed by Joy Cornwell, Campus Librarian 

The Fort Worth Campus Health Sciences Department held its biannual Mock Clinic on September 13, 2011.

The Mock Clinic is an opportunity for students in our Fort Worth Health Sciences programs (Medical Assisting with X-Ray [Limited Scope] and EKG, Pharmacy Technician, Medical Billing and Coding, and Dental Assisting) to interact with one another and practice their skills in settings that simulate an actual work environment.

The event also allows students at our Fort Worth Campus to share their knowledge and skills with one another, because each department works as part of a much larger team. The interactions among departments and students in the Health Sciences programs during the Mock Clinic provide a working foundation on which students can apply their learned skills.

During this most recent Mock Clinic, all of the Health Sciences programs had various stations set up in multiple classrooms, including Triage, Phlebotomy, Pharmacy, General Dentistry, and Patient Check-In.

“We arranged things so that the student playing the role of the patient would walk into the Patient Check-In area and fill out paperwork as if in a regular doctor’s office. The paperwork would then be entered into the computer by one of our Medical Billing and Coding students, and depending on the ailment that the patient listed, the triage area would obtain the patient record and escort that person through the clinic and the various classroom stations,” said Health Sciences Department Chair Tonia Lawrence.

Medical Billing and Coding student Erika Plasencia noted, “The experience gave me an opportunity to experience what working in the front office will be like. I was able to chart a patient’s information, check patients in and out, and really get a feel for how things will run when I’m out there on the job.”