JORDAN BREAD-ICTC

TALEQUAH HIGH SCHOOL

Tahlequah High School senior Jordan Bread is part of a brand-new program at Indian Capital Technology Center in Tahlequah known as Clinical Medical Assisting (CMA). Her interest in health care started out more as a personal mission last year when she completed the Health Care Careers class at ICTC.

“I got into it last year for my grandpa. He’s  really built our family from the ground up and I never wanted him to have to go to a nursing home, so I got my Certified Nurse Aide certification so I might be able to help care for him should he need it and once I got into the class and met everyone I knew this was what I was supposed to be doing,” said Jordan who would eventually like to be a firefighter, possibly a paramedic.

Jordan is wrestler at Tahlequah High who ironically got into wrestling on the advice of a student who was in the HCC class when Jordan was a freshman.

“I think there’s a lot of correlation between wrestling and these health care classes,” said Jordan. “In both, you have to be detail oriented and sometimes the two overlap like if someone on the team isn’t feeling well, they’ll come to me because they know I have some medical training.”

The new CMA class is taught by Ashley Gower who explained the details of the course.

 “In this class we focus on the skills needed to work in a clinical setting such as a doctor’s office or urgent care center. We teach about being an administrative assistant that deals with things like billing, appointment setting, and patient check in and a clinical assistant that helps with things like taking vital signs, doing culture swabs and injections. At the end of the course, they’ll take tests to become a certified phlebotomist technician (drawing blood) and a medical clinical assistant,” explained Gower.

For students thinking about their future, Jordan says ICTC is a great place to be.

“I’d say dive into it headfirst because you won’t know if it’s for you until you try it. I thought the classes might be boring but once we got into the hands-on training it changed my outlook.”