Medical assistant certification in New Jersey

Your program choice decides what you can do on the job. Pick an accredited one, and a doctor can have you give injections and draw blood once you earn your credential. Go to our New Jersey programs page, choose one accredited program, and send the short Request information form below the tables. Your request goes only to the school you picked.

Under a state medical board rule (N.J.A.C. 13:35-6.4), a physician may direct a certified medical assistant on staff to give shots into the skin, under the skin or into the muscle, and to draw blood from a vein. The Board's rule proposal lays out two things you need to count as certified.

• You completed a post-secondary medical assisting program that holds accreditation.
• You hold a current national credential, for example registration through AMT, or one issued by groups such as AAMA, NCCT, AMCA, NAHP or NCMA.

Your program must run 330 clock hours or more and cover injection training. In 2017 the Board reduced this requirement from 600 hours.

A physician has to record at least 10 hours of injection training for you before asking you to give shots. On top of that, you need hands-on practice: ten injections each in the muscle, under the skin, and within the skin.

The rules for drawing blood are similar: the physician records 10 or more hours of training in venipuncture and skin puncture, plus at least 10 venipunctures you have actually done. While working, you wear a badge that patients can see, with your name and credentials on it.

Before you give any injection, the physician must see the patient first, write the precise order for the shot, and remain in the building near the treatment room the whole time. State library records of the rule also spell out what you may never be asked to inject:

• Substances used to test for or treat allergies
• Numbing medicines (local anesthetics)
• Drugs classed as controlled dangerous substances
• Drugs still considered experimental
• Chemotherapy medicines, with corticosteroids as the one exception

New Jersey opens Prescription Monitoring Program delegate access only to certified medical assistants whose training totaled 600 hours. If you want that role, choose a program with 600 hours.

Using x-rays on a person in New Jersey takes a license. The Radiologic Technologist Act allows only a licensed practitioner or license holder to do it, and an employer may not knowingly take on an unlicensed technologist.

Limited licenses come from the Department of Environmental Protection:

Across the country, this site lists 1,094 medical assistant programs, and 484 of them carry CAAHEP or ABHES accreditation. That accreditation matters here, because the state rule calls for an accredited program.

At the career schools that report program length, the median is 9 months, and reported lengths range from 2 to 32 months. At career schools, the median published price for the whole program comes to $17,257 with tuition, fees and books included. At public colleges, the median is $4,346 a year for in-district tuition and fees.

A number of programs teach classes by distance education, though the supervised clinical practice always happens in person. Of the 30 programs that teach all their classes by distance education, 14 are accredited, and their supervised clinical practice is still in person.

As of May 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts medical assistant pay at a median of $45,690 a year, which works out to $21.97 an hour. By comparison, nursing assistants earned $42,260, phlebotomists earned $45,230, and licensed practical nurses took home a median of $64,400.