TRANSCRIPTION CHALLENGES IN A TECHNOLOGICAL NUTSHELL� - Keyboard Dancer

Transcription is becoming a lost art.  With the arrival of voice/speech recognition software, which captures sounds and “magically” turns them into words (albeit not always the correct ones), the specialty field of transcription has become an endangered livelihood.  Unfortunately, forgotten along the way are the skills and talents a good transcriptionist possesses to make a document accurate and easily readable.  The bottom line, as with most things, is the Almighty Dollar.

My transcription career began way back in the early 1980s, as a fledgling court reporter.  We heard about the advent of speech recognition and being replaced by tape recordings in the courtroom, so this has always been a lurking threat to the court reporting/transcription fields.  One of the reasons it has never totally been a threat in the courtroom, although it has been tried, (and still is), is the quality of the transcript that is produced from a recording.  The court reporter is the “keeper of the word” and is responsible for making sure there is an accurate record.  A tape recorder is a fallible piece of equipment that has a tendency to not work at the most inopportune of times. 

Likewise is the field of medical transcription, which is closely related to court reporting.  In fact, many former court reporters eventually go into this field as it has been a profession where one can work from home.  When I started in medical transcription, it was still a valued profession, and the pay was commensurate.  I worked outside of the home in a medical laboratory, where I enjoyed my work very much.  There was a lot to learn word-wise in Pathology.  I worked my way up and made what I considered decent money and doing a very satisfying and, for me, fulfilling job.  I love the written word.  In time, my hourly wage was threatened by the “Dragon,” speech recognition software still in use.  The higher-ups saw the opportunity to save money by having the doctors do their own “transcription.”  Of course, the quality of their reports diminished as doctors should not have to spend their time making sure every punctuation mark is right and every word is spelled correctly.  In fact, most are not trained or talented in that regard.  They are accustomed to just reading a completed document and verifying its accuracy.  Many “funny” but potentially dangerous errors ensued.  Still, it was a “moneymaker” or at least a money saver, so it continued.  I saw at that time, unfortunately, that my work there was no longer valued.

I decided with my quick and accurate transcription skills that I could make as decent a living working at home and not having the typical commuting expenses, ie., car maintenance, gas, etc., professional clothing, and the wasted time traveling to and from work.  It worked out awesomely for quite a while:  I worked for a company who treated their transcriptionists as their most valuable assets.  I was paid by the line, not a lot, but I felt in control of my paycheck…and my destiny.  The harder I worked the more I could earn. 

In time, speech/voice recognition reared its ugly head once more and began to threaten, in a real way, the entire medical transcription field.  Move ahead to present day – it is becoming a “killer” of the actual medical transcriptionist.  We are now relegated to editing a document from speech recognition software, changing incorrect verbiage, and making the note accurate and easily readable.  Not such a bad thing, you might think?  The problem comes when higher-ups decide since the report is already “made” by the doctor and the voice recognition software, and the transcriptionist is only editing the work, that the pay (merely cents per line to begin with) can be cut in half, or more, as in their justification it should take only half the time, or less, to produce the note.  Not true.  A talented, experienced transcriptionist can type faster than they can edit a document where they have to remove, move around, add, correct, and verify what comes through after the SR software has done its job.  Here again, they are “saving” money, but, again, making a document that is possibly incorrect, with potential dangerous inaccuracies. 

I have read many transcription boards lately where talented, experienced transcriptionists have lost their jobs and are scrambling for ways to make ends meet as our profession has been demolished by this technology.  Technology is awesome in most regards, even speech recognition software, when used in an innocuous manner such as on smart phones, or for personal use.  It is fun to say something and see what comes up, sometimes correct, but many times not even close.  That is where this specific technology should remain, not replacing valuable, talented, professional “keepers of the word,” but in games and harmless usage in a text message, when people’s life-or-death legal or healthcare documentation is at stake.