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

I think I died and went to heaven....... Sm - Old Woman

Posted: Sep 17, 2011

I just got an eleven-minute dictation that I actually had the pleasure of transcribing as opposed to doing speech recognition on it. The dictator was perfect!! He spoke at a regular rate, not too fast and not too slow. His thoughts were organized and he enunciated his words clearly. I just typed my little heart out on that one and loved every minute of it!!!! Why can't it always be like that??? <Sigh>

Heaven - SassyMT

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I'm jealous LOL. Lucky you.

Because.... - dmz

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....then "anyone" could do it and it would not be such a critical profession! :) JMO.

I beg to differ....sm - Old Woman

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Medical transcription is not just typing what you hear; it is also understanding what you transcribing and not everyone has that talent. If you don't believe me, just look at some of the off-shored work that comes back to our shores for us to "fix." I have seen some of the easiest-to-understand dictation made into hash by those who are not trained in the profession and are just "typing what they hear."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it is this kind of perception that has helped degrade our profession, not just for some but across the board. If we believe that we are merely typists and not trained professionals with ears attuned to the nuances of the medical language, then we have already shot ourselves in the foot.

Old Woman - Old Pro

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I agree with you completely! It is like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear someone say "I typed....." No, you didn't! If you are any good, you TRANSCRIBED, not typed. World of difference. And I think many people think of what we do as "typing," and therein lies a huge factor in degrading our profession.

Also Agree! "Transcribe" vs. "type" is an important distinction. - Another Old Pro

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This has bothered me for years, because it trivializes what we do. This is within our power. We can call it by its correct term. Medical Transcriptionists are paid to "transcribe". Typing is only one part of it. If they needed a typist, anyone could do it.

disagree, dmz. It's the Medical in Transcription that sets us apart - or you paid some school a wad for...

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......nothing.

I think you all are missing her point - Happy MT Robin

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The OP had a very easy dictator whose thoughts were organized and he spoke at a moderate pace and enunciated and she asked why it couldn't always be like that.

Quite frankly, if it was always like that, they wouldn't need us because then VR really WOULD work or pretty much anyone really could do this job.

Our education and experience and critical thinking abilities come into play with the doctors who don't speak clearly and at a moderate pace with their thoughts organized.

When we have the doctor who speaks so quickly and slurs his words so badly that we think he's saying "semen level" instead of "acetaminophen level" (I kid you not - this was at the end of a long night for me)or when you have the nurse practitioner who repeatly dictates a dose of MS Contin as 1500 mg t.i.d. instead of 15 mg t.i.d. or, my favorite, the (different) nurse practitioner who says the patient had a radiation dose of 3600 "gray" and then says "that's small c, capital G, small y" (or cGy which is CENTIGRAY which is a very different dose and if your patient got 3600 gray of radiation they'd probably be dead)

That's why they need us - because the dictator who is as clear as the one describe in the original post is about as rare as me actually seeing my toes when I look down at my feet.

fine but we all were commenting on tmz's remark, not the OP.s. - nuther story. NM

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.

So was I - Happy MT Robin

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nm

I understood Happy MT Robin, and OP. The value of - what we do, tho, is multiplied through

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VR--where we bring out expertise to reports on twice the number of patients. I understand OP's pleasure, but, really, our expertise is to valuable to be slowed down tying when a computer can do it for us. Typing itself always was just a mechanical, not cerebral skill; transcription's main benefit now is that it requires us to work much slower, to slack off the increased pace we otherwise have to harness our expertise to.

Again, I beg to differ on one count..... - Old Woman

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While "typing" is a mechanical skill, "transcription" is a cerebral function. One has to identify the difference, for example, between "hypo-" and "hyper-" in order to produce an accurate medical record. The listening skills required to do this are not generally found in your average typist. A legal secretary, for example, could not do our job. Likely we would have to retrain to do theirs as well. Therefore, we cannot degrade our profession to that of a common typist or we can expect no more that the compensation given an average typist.

yes - hitbyaturtle

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I totally agree. I think of what I do as "interpreting" - like those UN interpreters with the headphones who hear something in a foreign language & speak that language fluently enough to be able to translate it into something else; in our case, readable English. I rather liked the title "medical language specialist" for this reason, but I don't see it used much.

Heaven - isn't it wonderful! - me too

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It's like day and night to get a good dictation as opposed to a bad one. I often say "thank you!" after I get a good one.

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