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Accents are hard to understand... any tips? - Shoot me in the foot...

Posted: Feb 07, 2011

Lately I've been rethinking this choice I made for doing medical transcript work. I'm still in the 3rd course but the accents they have me working through are really hard to understand at times. Why do doctors mumble? Are there any tips you would like to share to help me get through this? Positive construction is welcome. Keep your negitivity to yourselves.

Accents - nn

[ In Reply To ..]
Not being negative here at all, but again, I believe that sometimes people get into this field with the hope of making "great money" and being able to work from home. Developing "an ear," (for accents, etc.), is a skill that develops over time, sometimes MANY years. That is why the majority of the transcription companies do not hire newbies right out of school. They simply do not have the time or money to spend on training a new MT or do a lot of "handholding."

Accents - Shoot me in the foot...

[ In Reply To ..]
Thank you. I wish they would be real with us during those seminars. I guess I will work 10 times as hard to show them I can do it without them holding my hand. Thank you very much for being real :)

When I first started, I used to keep a little notebook handy SM - MTlover

[ In Reply To ..]
with things like Indian doc says womiting not vomiting, pawawa means paragraph in Chinese, you get the picture. It really does help but takes time to learn.

Accents - Shoot me in the foot

[ In Reply To ..]
I thought about doing that but I wasn't sure if I could rely on that but I should probably give anything a try right now. I listed all the rules and where to find them and it's helped. I've also made a checklist of things I need to check before I turn in my quizzes.

This might sound strange but I imagine my ears opening - up. I relax my shoulders and imagine

[ In Reply To ..]
taking in the voice and processing it. I also flood my ears with that accent if possible, listening to as many of the difficult accents as possible in one chunk.

If you know your stuff from top-notch training - and sufficient experience

[ In Reply To ..]
It won't matter whether they mumble, talk fast, or have any combination of accents. You will understand what they are saying because you will know what they are supposed to be saying. You need to know what to anticipate in any particular specialty or context, otherwise medical dictation is just a random collection of meaningless syllables. Knowledge comes with good training and good experience.

Sorry. I disagree. While that helps, its not the key. - not intimidated but nice try.

[ In Reply To ..]
.

Bless your heart. You must be a newbie. - nm

[ In Reply To ..]
x

Bless YOUR heart... - tanya

[ In Reply To ..]
You must have never worked for the Q or else you would know that there most certainly ARE dictators that are unintelligible. (In certain op notes, it is easier to predict what is being said, but when it comes to a patient's history, labs, med dosages, that is not always the case. Plus, a good MT does not ''guess''.)

Sometimes they accent the wrong syllable - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
The first account I ever transcribed 30 years ago was Iranian (or Persian, as he liked to consider himself). He would put the accent on the wrong syllable all the time .. osteo-TOMY, PHAL-anges, even non-medical words like uti-LIT-ies and THERMO-meter.. once I figured out what he was doing, I would try the word in my head putting the accent on other syllables to see if I could come up with the right word.

I still use this technique and it works sometimes.

Yeah. It's like playing Mad Gab, which I am very good - at, I must say. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
x

My technique - RiverMT

[ In Reply To ..]
I listen and type the report as best I can the first time through, leaving blanks at the points I don't understand. Sometimes, further down in the report, the same word you left a blank for, is dictated and you catch it this time. Also, for me, if I just leave it the first time around and then go back to it, I've listened enough to the accent while typing the whole report that I catch that blank immediately the second time I listen to it. Don't give up. Remember the context of the report, what part of the body is being referred to and the type of report you are doing. Good luck!

This is what I do, too. I find if I stress over every blank as I go...sm - ndmt

[ In Reply To ..]
the dictation seems overly hard. Go back and listen again once it is over, and you really will be able to fill things in based on the context of the report.

Also, don't over think the report. Many times I struggled trying to make medical words out of simple words. If they keep saying the same thing over & over, it could be instructions like paragraph, new sentence, go back, etc.

I also have ESLs not comfortable with dictating and not exceptional with the English language who repeat sentences a lot. If it sounds exactly like what you just typed, it might be exactly what you just typed.

my tip - accents

[ In Reply To ..]
What I like to do is to imagine speaking in the accent. (Like Meryl Streep, for example!)

If they are Asian, Spanish, Russian, whatever, I "do" the accent in my head or even out loud in order to hear what they may be saying.

Me too! - Shoot me in the foot

[ In Reply To ..]
I have started doing the accent too! But whenever I do, my roommate starts giving me weird looks. Thank goodness it's all practice and homework right now. I'll have to learn to be quiet when she's around in the future when I actually start typing real stuff.

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