A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

"Comfortable" line count - An MT mind

Posted: Feb 14, 2011

For those of you who work on production, how long did it take for you to be comfortable with the line count you're transcribing? "Comfortable" may not be the appropriate word because the amount of money is never enough for the majority of us but enough to pay your bills and still some left over to treat yourself, vacation, save. I'm still getting used to being paid on production and I don't mind it, but I still want to work on producing more to become comfortable with my income. I don't feel at the point of comfortable right now.

Great thing about IC. Working harder/smarter benefits YOU, - not MTSO so much. nm

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Been at my employer for 4 years. Not only - still not comfortable, but getting poorer!

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Time to find another employer. - nm

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Been looking for 3 years-plus. - nm

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Looking for three years - MTGal

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Your post made me feel somewhat better about finding a decent position (oxymoron??). Now I am sorry you have been looking for three years and are still looking. I have been at it for about 1-1/2 years. I do have an IC position and actually very good dictators, no ESLs, no voice, but an IC nonetheless. I really would like to be an employee, but I want part time (might consider FT), and everytime I see the ads or apply and jump through all the hoops for nothing and know that they all have ESLs and voice and all that other horrible stuff, I just keep on looking. Good luck to you and to all of us for that matter. I feel the MTS of this decade are really hurting in a horrible way and it makes me sad, because I know we all do a very good job and try our best and give up so much, holidays, work eves and weekends and they just keep beating us down. I say a little prayer for all of us.

So you want employee, no ESL and no voice? Better adjust - with the times or look forever. nm

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No kidding, NM. :) I really do not believe "ESL" is the problem - Pragmatist

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many think it is. I've always done heavy ESL and bring no emotional baggage to the task (which I suspect is a very important part of doing well).

The thing is, I make JUST AS MUCH MONEY on my ESLs once I become familiar with them as I do on my accent-less dictators. Sure, there are impossible stinkers, but those come with and without accents, mostly without.

IMO, for those of you who are not allowed to become familiar with a limited number of assigned accounts--THAT's your real problem, plus, of course, that extra baggage some are dragging around.

Agree. My worse ESL are Brits as I dont get many and their - speech cadence throws me off. nm

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:) I'm watching some old "Upstairs Downstairs" episodes - and cannot make out most the first few

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minutes until I get a little used to them. Then it's better. Thank goodness I don't have Mrs. Bridges for a dictator.

Re understanding Brit - I always use closed captioning on my TV - sm

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when watching PBS Masterpiece Theater because I can't understand them :)

re worst ESL are Brits - sc

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That's interesting. In all the years I've been transcribing (both coasts), I've never encountered a British accent, but one of the very worst I did have was a Scottish accent, which is similar. I recently took a non-medical transcription test based in the UK, and I failed. :-(

Troll. - :p

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Don't know who you mean, but you - get banned for that. NM

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Is this suppose to bother me as much as the above post seems to - have bothered you? So what, who cares. lol NM

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Whatever! - N

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Thank you. You're obviously a true, hardworking MT - like myself. Unlike "SM" below, - sm

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who doesn't seem to have a realistic view of what it's like in this profession nowadays. If I had to guess, I'd say she's either still wet behind the ears in her own MT experience, or else she's a management troll.

Bless your heart, but I have a job I like & didnt take me 3+ years - to find it. nm

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Truth be told, the reason I've been looking for 3 yrs is - I want something other than an MTSO! nm

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,

Then dont try to make it sound like you are looking for MT job - if that is not the case. Still SM

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say something is missing if you cant find ANY other job after 3 years.

I AM looking for an MT job. Not all jobs are - with MTSOs.

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You skills must be lacking if you havent been able to find - something better in that time, SM

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assuming you are really looking, not just sending in a couple of resumes a year with no follow-up. If you were that unhappy where you are, you would have been out of there long ago. But then I guess some are happiest when they are unhappy.

Nice.....Hope you feel better now....nm - Sunny Disposition

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xx

Yeah, that's right. Inflate your own ego by putting - down other MTs whose - sm

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shoes you don't walk in, and whose situation you know nothing about.

If ANY cant find another job in 3+ years, there has to be - a problem with what they bring to the table. nm

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The problem is what the MTSOs are bringing to the table. - Which isnt enough to live on.

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It is enough to live on, just not as good compared - anon

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to the cost of living as it used to be. Prices went up a lot, lines rates went down a little.

All those who agree with people who can't/won't earn enough that you're good and the companies are bad are doing you a disservice. Get competent and stop suffering or get out and stop suffering. That's positive advice from someone who'd rather see you happy than otherwise. All the rest of us can ever do is tell you what's working for us. You have to actually do it.

Studies show people have baseline happiness levels - they tend return to even after terrible

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disasters. VERY sad to say, some people probably spend their lives at baseline not happy, or worse.

That's the problem with SM's snarky posts. There - is a baseline self-worth there that is lacking.

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SM has plenty of baseline self-worth which is why I have not - stayed in bad situation for 4 years. nm

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Yes. Likely that person hasn't looked for years either, just - just suffers from lack of regard for truth. NM

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MY truth is I like my job and I make what I consider a good living at it. - MY truth is I would not stay in a SM

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situation I thought was not meeting my needs. MY truth is I would not come here whining how bad I have it but not do whatever is needed to change it. MY truth is if I wanted out of a situation, it would not take me 3+ years to get out of it. MY truth is I want to learn VR, all platforms, cause that gives me more skills and more choices of what I want from my job. MY truth is I am constantly looking for ways to work smarter, not harder. MY truth is I am sorry you have a crappy job but my truth is I DO NOT.

Well isn't that special. - [eye-roll]

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MT Mind, how long? Great question but rather hard to say - Pragmatist

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because I've always been a production worker, right from the beginning, $2/hour days. Nevertheless, in my current job as a skilled MT/ME, I'd guess it took probably most of half a year to get really familiar with my 2 main accounts, create templates, build up my expander dictionaries to cover terms and phrases docs use on them, and develop macros for most repetitive tasks, in other words do most of what I felt I could do to maximize my speed ("most" because I'm always working at it).

I guess that comfort point for me comes both from knowing I've arrived at a good level of competence and from the level of income earned. I'm not letting myself down.

Thinking about it, that half year sounds long, but it does include extensive continued development of my expander systems and dictionaries, which are set up so they will work just as well anywhere. Thus, it includes continued development of my skills, rather than just getting fast at a specific job, if that makes sense. (BTW, moving to another company would require building new templates and revision of macros; but very little of that investment in my biggest asset, my dictionaries, is dictator- or account-specific, thus very portable.)

Probably I could have cut the time down more by developing more templates and macros ASAP. I did many right up front, but of course you're not making lines while you're doing that, so I'd leave some for another time, thus stretching out the time needed to get to that "comfortable" point.

my experience - ttmt

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I started doing clinic notes 10 years ago and made much less than minimum wage. I cried many times and thought I was a total failure. It probably took me 3 or 4 months to get into a groove of about 200 or 230 lines an hour straight typing.

Fast forward 10 years, I'm now doing mostly VR acute care with an account I love. I'm probably at 275 to 350 an hour average. Of course, as you know, some days are better and some are much, much worse. I hope that helps.

About six months yet still... - An MT mind

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I have a litte more than six years experience as an MT. In the past six months, I have become very familiar with some dictators but I have still a way to go. Every now and then when I do a report, it seems like I'm looking up just about every term I encounter. Of course, that slows me down. I know a big help would be an expander program and I want to get it but I'm trying to figure out if I can have my expander list on more than one computer. I'm considering maybe some keyboarding software to be able to type faster. Even the little things I think about, such as type of desk and keyboard to have, anything that can help me improve before throwing the towel in.

Oh, absolutely you can have your expander lists on - more than one computer. I do. SM

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You can just e-mail them to yourself. I send copies to our son in another town in case our house burns down. I do keep one as a "master" list on my main work computer and usually only make new entries on that one. That way I can just download it to the others to update them. There are probably more sophisticated ways to do it so you can add to all of them, but I never learned any.

Reconfiguring your keyboard would probably be very helpful, but at this point I can't think of anything that'll work the miracle for your production that an expander will.

I was, frankly, a little shocked that you don't have one yet, but that's also good for your prognosis. Depending on how conscientious you are at developing your use, you can expect to increase your production dramatically over the next few months. But you're going to LOVE what you see happening just in the first couple of weeks.

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