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First, please do NOT even use the term FAILURE to identify yourself in anyway. NO ONE doing this job is a failure, period.
You state you do not use any normals or standards because everything MUST be typed from scratch. Is that "must" coming from your employer or because you don't see a way to do it with the changes you have to make?
I don't often have to use a long "normal" or "standard" such as an entire exam or review of systems, etc. I use word expanders, autocorrect, shorthand, etc., for individual words and phrases more than anything. Nest them. Examples of individual words: Use "ow" for "otherwise"; use "ht" for hematocrit; use "hps" for hepatosplenomegaly. When making your shortcuts, make sure you use what comes naturally. Then do phrases: "hpm" for "0.5% Marcaine" while "hpmx" is "half-percent Marcaine"; use "mzb" for "Metzenbaum scissors", etc.
My most productive times are when I am NOT using a large cut of canned text but literally 'skipping along' shortcutting phrases as they are dictated.
Operative note example: For the phrase "The patient was taken to the operating room and placed on the operating room table in the supine position." -- I have this in 3 separate shortcuts and type:
tptor and poort isup
The only "word" I typed was 'and'...the rest of that sentence was in shortcuts.
Don't jump in there and do them all at once. Try to do 5 to 10 (I would not recommend doing more than 10 a day) shortcuts a day. Write them down in a list and keep by your monitor until you can use them without referring to your list. Then do another 5 to 10 shortcuts.
I'm not boosting my line count in any fashion whatsoever. My accounts are verbatim accounts. If I had long spills of canned text, I'd spend all day editing that to fit verbatim. Instead, I use individual word and phrase shortcuts. The key is to name them so it comes naturally to you.
I do all my medications by starting the shortcut with a "k" because it is so unused and I can easily look at all the med shortcuts in the list. The meds I use most are vancomycin, gentamicin, Tylenol, and ibuprofen. For me, those are listed as kv, kgg, kt, and ki.
Use your autocorrect to capitalize acronyms. I type copd in lower case and have that entered into autocorrect so it automatically capitalizes it for me as COPD -- saves me the "struggle" of having to capitalize it. Then I add an "x" to the end to expand it out, so copdx is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Sometimes, if it is more natural, I double the last letter of the shortcut name for expanding it such as gbb for gallbladder.
Shortcut some of your punctuation, too: Using "ft," is "Following this," for the beginning of some sentences.
Design macros to carry out functions for yourself. I hate it when doctors number the first of a list and then there is never a 2nd item. Therefore, I NEVER number the first item even if it is dictated. Instead, I built a macro so that IF he goes on with "#2..." then I hit my macro and it goes back to the beginning of that line, numbers it, and returns to the end of the line, returns, and numbers for the 2nd item. I have a macro that goes back and changes the capitalized heading of "DIAGNOSIS" to "DIAGNOSES" for when there are more than 1 diagnoses listed.
Learn to use your search/replace features, etc.
???? Will any of this help ???? |
Hints and tips ... - Busy MT'ing
