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

Have any of you found that as you've gotten older, other variables aside... sm - SoOldSoTired

Posted: Oct 13, 2011

that it's harder to pull these lines?

Don't get me wrong, my speed has also been impacted by some of the changes that we've seen in the industry over the last few years, but I just don't have the energy, so to speak, that I had when I was younger to crank out lines in a high-producer range. It's so tiring to try to maintain a steady frenzied pace for eight hours. I'm not a machine. Just don't know what to do. I need the money, but I just can't seem to make it work any more.

Any constructive suggestions are much appreciated.

I wish I had the answer...I also feel lately that I - shortcake

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can't keep up. In the past few weeks since being bought by the devil especially because I am trying not to send anything to QA, researching everying single questionable thing, and just so worried about not meeting the line count, 99% accuracy, not taking any breaks, etc., I just can't do it. More times than none I find myself at the end of my shift and not meeting my line count. I always seem to have butterflies in my stomach thinking about this job.....so sad

I feel your pain. - Do This

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Some days I feel like if I hear certain doctor voices one more time I am going to vomit. Motivation gets down. You get distracted. You get tired.

First of all, change your working area. Clean it up. Dress it up. Put out new pictures of family friends, etc. Play low soft music in the background.

Believe it or not - slow down. Relax. This fast, frenzied pace you speak of can be extremely stressful. Just try to work at a steady pace that is enough to get in just above the minimum line requirement. Perhaps you need a day off. Perhaps you need to get out of the house for a while. What helps you feel refreshed?

You say you are so Old. You have probably been at this a while and are pretty good at what you do. Can you do it - while at the same time having more pleasant thoughts in mind? Maybe that music will help.

A change of scenery does wonders, whether it is in your work area or getting away from it. Do a little more of it and see if that doesn't freshen you up and get you motivated again.

I know exactly what you are going through. I usually to really love doing this. My line count is still good, but some days I just hate it. I am lucky in that I have a good job and make a decent living so I have to work on my own mental attitude sometimes.

I am in the same boat! - tiredofworking

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Almost 40 years of transcribing and I am to the point where I just don't care. I am barely making minimum wage these days. I now work 8 hours, get in my line count, and call it a day. I used to live at my computer working 7 days a week and sometimes 12 hours day because the money was just so darn good! Not any more. I don't give my MTSO my evenings or my weekends. They don't deserve me at those hours for the pittance they pay. I usually get a rude email sometime in the middle of the night asking me why there are still files in my queue...well sister, you put them there, I didn't. When my 8 hours are over, they are over!
I have a life after 5 and on weekends and it doesn't include making minimum wage. Forty hours of my life a week is all I give them and I don't feel the least bit guilty when I turn off my computer at 5:00! Thanks for the vent!

tired of working too - ljw

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I feel the same way. What MTSO do you work for. I sent a private email but not sure if you got it.

Lower energy here from age, but more from demoralization - over low wages, occult manipulation of

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income even farther downward, erosion of motivation to be great.

As others say, I used to feel personal responsibility for keeping the accounts in tat, always willing to answer that call to sit back down and keep it caught up, for doing more of the hard dictators so they wouldn't end up at QA. High line counts themselves inspired me to be even better.

Now, no. The profit margin on additional effort is just too low, and these days I already give way more than 100% just by "editing" the SR failures at 56% pay and taking my losses.

Same here. It's hard to be enthusiastic about work - when you know that no matter - s/msg

[ In Reply To ..]
how much of it you do, or how fast, or how well, your compensation is going to continue to deteriorate. My employer recently offered to promote me from regular MT to a QA person. Yet the QA process is so non-user-friendly, that the so-called 'promotion' would simply mean even more hours of work and even less pay. Fugetaboutit. If I'm going to be dirt-poor either way, then I'd rather do it creating something, rather than just editing it.

But this job has been a real lifeblood-sucker for the past 4 or 5 years. I now longer care about my current job, I can't even care anymore about any other job. I look for a new job every day, either as an MT or in some other field, and each one sounds more depressing than the last.

All I see are:
Clerk/typist positions that want a min. of 5 years' experience in whatever field that job happens to be in;
Receptionist jobs that, even though 90% of your workday would be answering phones, still have 'experience with Powerpoint, Quickbooks, and bilingual' as absolute must-haves;
Secretary jobs that not only want all of the above, but they want a B.A. degree, as well. (In what? A 'BA of Secretarial Science?' Does such a degree even exist?)

So in the first year or two of job-hunting, I also started toying with the idea of going back to school (at age 60+). School used to be a ticket to prosperity in the past, but now it's just a one-way ticket to overwhelming debt. As a young person, there's still a very good chance you won't find a job in your chosen field of study/certification. But as an almost-senior, during the current hard times, the notion that going to college for another 2 to 3 years, or even to trade school or business school for another 1 to 3 years, would be just plain foolish. And that's if I even had the money to spend on courses, and didn't have to work at this joke of job concurrently.

I even thought about being a dog-walker, which pays much better than MT, but I'm a cat person.

I guess you can tell from this post that I'm as depressed as all get-out. The only thing that would make me feel better this afternoon is if I could buy a gallon of Ben & Jerry's New York Super-Chunk Fudge ice cream, and eat the entire gallon in one sitting. But I can't afford it.

You hit it spot on - Cathy

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I have been struggling with being an MT since last year when all of my accounts were switched without warning. My production dropped. I lost all motivation. I worked really hard over the past year to try to get back up to speed again and find some motivation again. I was finally starting to make progress, gain speed back, making a bit more money and then my accounts were changed yet again just a couple of weeks ago. All of that progress was lost I got notice that I had been switched to a new account that consists of 14 different hospitals in 9 different states. Excuse me? Now I am struggling yet again to meet production, making right around minimum wage, and no longer have any motivation. I feel like a hamster running in a wheel. I feel like there is no point in trying to excel because as soon as I do I get knocked right back down again.

There's nothing wrong with ANY of you. What's - wrong is the companies we work for. nm

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nm

Re: ''Nothing wrong with ANY of you''... - sm

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Short and sweet and 100% accurate! Great post!

MTSO's - sooo tired ... soooo stressed !!!!

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AMEN ! Loved this profession until the last 3 years or so when VR hit me in the face! Wages going down . . . down ... down . . . dread every minute of the day, dreading the time my shift starts in the evening ! You are NOT alone and NOT your fault !

I don't think it's my age. What slows me down - (s/m)

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the most is all the ridiculous hoops my company's software makes us jump through just to type one lousy report.

Also the fact that we work on many accounts, and each account has a jillion rules on how it is to be typed. They even allow each doctor to have their own set of rules. It would be one thing if you worked inhouse at that hospital, and knew the institution well. But when you jump back and forth all day between 5, or 7, or even 10 different hospitals, all the time spent digging out job descriptions and re-familiarizing yourself with it is really a drag. My line counts were far better back when I worked onsite at a hospital than they are now, and I can give one glaring reason: SOFTWARE OVER-COMPLICATION.

Not Your Age - Disgruntled MT

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It's not because you're getting older, it's because this job stinks these days. I used to love going to work. I'm not burned out from MT itself, I'm burned out from what it has become. If not for this ASR nonsense and cut in pay, I'd be a happy little camper. I'd even put up with the ASR crud if they hadn't cut my pay.

It's crazy isnt it? (sm) - AnaPhylaxis

[ In Reply To ..]
I've been doing this for 20 years and up until the last 5 years I worked primarily in-house at an hourly rate (my own private accounts were charged/paid by the hour as well).

Ironically, I produced MORE lines per hour being paid by hourly than I can being paid by line, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. I'm transcribing at the same rate of speed but I think the primary difference is we at-home MTs so rarely get the same physicians often enough to get into any sort of productive rhythm. We may get an excellent dictator once or twice, but then that dictator disappears. We may get a so-so dictator a handful of times, but as soon as we become accustomed to that dictator's style and can get into a rhythm, *poof*, that one disappears too. With a large teaching facility, it's nearly impossible to get the same dictator more than a handful of times.

In the good old days of working in-house, we might have 100 dictators or so but they were those SAME 100 dictators day in and day out. We had a chance to become familiar with them, almost with the ability to know what they were going to dictate before the words were out of their mouths. Now...pssshhhh, most of these dictators have no idea what's going to come out of their mouths next, so there's no way we can be one step ahead of them. Most the time we're too busy scratching our heads thinking "What the heck did he just say???" They all seem to be in such a hurry they don't even bother to take the time to pronounce medications correctly, just slur them out as quickly as possible and leave it to us to decipher it as best we can.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on, but I, too, have given this subject so much thought myself and why, when getting paid per line where my livelihood/paying the bills is at stake, do I produce LESS than I did when getting paid per hour, when whether it was 100 or 300 lines per hour, my pay was the same.

Personally, I think primarily it's the slipshod assortment of dictators, their sloppy habits, our lack of familiarity with these dictators, and, not mentioned above but oh-so-obvious, the constant PRESSURE COOKER ENVIRONMENT we're forced to work under which oftentimes hinders us instead of motivating us.

You have my sympathies and I am sure many, many of us feel precisely as you do.

Right there with you, at 37 years MT'ing. - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
Yes, it IS harder to pull the lines. I don't have the stamina I once had. I used to work 12-15 hr a day for years, now I'm feeling very ready to stop at 6 to 7 hr. What to do? Taking frequent breaks helps me, lots of little ones, several long ones. So having a job with flexibility to do that helps immensely. If you're still pushing at a frenzied pace, you must be feeling very burnt out. Take a vacation lately? Paid or not paid, take it!! I also wouldn't be beyond asking for a different account that you might be able to make better lines on. I've had to accept I just am not going to make the money I used to; gotta pace myself. I use ergonomic aids as well. Eat well, exercise daily, refresh your mind with gratitude. If all else fails, consider a related field maybe? Know that you have company out here and we DO understand.

SoOldSoTired - marshall11

[ In Reply To ..]
I hear you loud and clear. Actually, if you can sit and constantly work for 6 or 7 hours, you have me beat....I work 6 hour shifts but can't make it through without coffee or some exercise. I also don't know if it's just because I am older now or what, but I absolutely can no longer handle more than a couple of accounts with such varying rule and regulations. It wouldn't be so bad if the account rules were "hard and fast", but one of my accounts has such darn ambiguous policies, even QC isn't always sure. (If it's a full moon, and it's Tuesday, etc). I spend more time researching, second-guessing, etc. than working.

I am making one last attempt to stay in this field, which I truly do love. Looking for a job involving only straight transcription, since I think it's the only way to earn a decent living in this field anymore. The straw that broke the camel's back was when my 18-year-old daughter got her first real job last week.....making twice what I do.

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