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Would enjoy talking with Macro Diva about all things macro! I've written one big macro with which I preprocess virtually all of my transcribed documents. First, it identifies the document template type, e.g., office note, letter, hospital discharge, echocardiogram, PV study, etc. It then displays a dialog box with drop-down lists from which I select the ordering physician, dictating physician, date of study, date dictated. etc. (The date of transcription is, of course, always the current date, so it's provided automatically by the macro.) It then populates all of the above information in the document template. There are lots of other goodies; for example, if Dr. Smith likes to use a certain introductory statement for every renal artery ultrasound, it will insert that statement into the document based on the document template type and the identity of the dictating physician.
The macro has helped me a lot with my speed and accuracy. Another nice thing is that it's implemented in modules which I export and which my coworkers can import, so it's easy to share, and other people can benefit from it.
I would be interested in setting up productivity tools such as this for other folks outside of my usual 9-to-5 job, but I'm not really sure how to kick-start the process.
I realize that I have to be careful with the word "macro", as it means different things to different people. Some folks seem to think that it refers to little bits of boilerplate text, while others are familiar only macros that are created via "Record New Macro" in Word. My macros are handmade, custom-built software and as such are more sophisticated than some folks might assume.
I've noticed that newer versions of Word do not include the Visual Basic Editor. Uh-oh! What's up with that? What are we to do about it...?
Whew! Enough for now. Thanks for listening!