What the Q has done for (or to) me (rant) - Anonymous

I was thinking about this earlier today.  I worked for a lot of years in hospitals doing MT, worked for doctors doing the same (I often had doctors try to steal me away from the hospitals I worked for to go and work for them but I'm loyal to a fault and it sometimes gets me hurt), and when I was just working for a doctor to cover for a transcriptionist on vacation, I was always asked back for the next vacation.  Always had perfection with my reports, never ever had an issue with running out of work or line count issues (or minute count as we had in SC - I believe it was 108 minutes we had to do every shift on that old Lanier system).  I was confident in what I typed and I knew I produced excellent and high quality work.  And we made it fun when every 3 years JCAHO visited and we all had to put in massive overtime to type all of the discharge summaries that were 3 or more weeks old (they would crap if they saw how far behind we were on some of the reports, and we even farmed out and still couldn't keep up).  We were all tired and stressed but we worked together.  When I left that hospital in SC, I was a part time employee, working 24 hours.  (I was a newlywed and that was all I wanted).  I spoke with my former coworker a few months after leaving SC and she said they had to hire a full time person to replace me. 

Fast forward to working for the Q.  I now question almost everything I do.  They sometimes nitpick the stupidest things.  Hey, I saw feedback where the MME filled in the marker but didn't put a period at the end of the sentence where she had filled in the blank.  Nothing I can do about it.  But that would be what I would call nitpicking.  So frickin' what - she left out a period.  She's human too.  But had I done it, I would have been dinged for it.  It's like the MTs are the crap of the earth to these MTSO employers, when we are the ones who work the hardest, grinding out reports from crappy rock-mouthed dictators or ESLs, etc., having to make our lines, check our E-mail (good grief do they send a lot) and check our feedback.  Okay, you want 100 lines per hour.  Say I've had a really rough week and I just made the minimum required.  When did you expect me to take care of E-mail and feedback?  I've often done those 2 on my own time since my lines keep going down and I know darned well I'm typing more than I'm getting credit for. 

I have worked with a lot of great women while doing this job (one hospital was a 900 bed facility and we had about 15 or 16 MTs there.  I worked 2nd shift (I had the same shift at both hospitals in which I worked, and we got a 2nd shift differential.  3rd shift got paid even more of a differential).  We also got a weekend differential.  Think the Q would do that?  Not in this lifetime.    

I loved working 2nd shift at the hospitals because I absolutely love my sleep and love to sleep in when I can.  However, in the long run, working 2nd shift hurt me as far as learning op reports really well because the day shift ate them up as soon as they came in (there are always 1 or 2 snooty women at any given hospital who insist on doing nothing but op reports and they're always allowed to do just that.  LOL). 

It was nice to have other people around (or charts to refer to if it was in a doctor's office) to listen to your blanks.  I don't think we ever sent any reports to the floor at the hospitals with a blank because at least one of us could figure it out, or, we were actually given a heck of a lot more liberty to make the decision whether the doctor was just stumbling over a word or there was more to it.   We had the option of finding out if the resident who dictated the report in question was still in house and we could call them.  (did I ever tell you my osso vagus story?)   Most doctor's offices I did MT for let me take the equipment and charts home.  I did them prior to my 2nd shift at the hospital, dropped off the finished product on the way to work, and picked up more to be done the next morning. 

The Q has made me so insecure about what I do.  They've cheated me out of lines and whole reports.  One day, I had 2 dictations in a row, one was about 35 minutes and the other was about 50 minutes.  I did both reports.  When I pulled up my stats for these very lenghty reports, I had a total credit of 1 line for each report.  Those 2 reports took up quite a bit of my day.   When I called my supe, she told me their system showed another MT had done both reports and got credit for them.  Why, then, did they even show up as me having done them with just 1 line of credit?  I was still relatively new at the time and figured it was just a fluke.  Now I know what cheats they are.  They must all be former government employees.  They're worse than politicians, stealing your money, etc.  They're nothing but a bunch of cheats.  And no matter how much you may try and hide something you're doing wrong, eventually it all comes out and I would not be surprised to see MQ sued again for doing the same thing.  And why wouldn't they?  What did they get?  A slap on the wrist basically.  They paid back the companies but not the MTs for all the work they did for free.  Who in the heck was the judge that made that decision?  Probably the same one who would let a child molester go free.

Another day at the Q, I worked and did 900+ lines.  I had one more report that hadn't shown up, so the next day, I went to check my final totals and the report showed NO PRODUCTIVITY for the day before.  No transcription, no correction.  It was like I had never logged in or did any work.  They cheated me out of close to 1,000 lines.  I had also done around 950 lines the day before that and I was informed I must be thinking about that day.  I'm not an idiot.   They have made me suspicious and paranoid.

I never know what mood my supervisor will be in.  I tend to sympathize with her because they keep changing crap around - service areas, job titles, job responsibilities, etc.  I believe she is overworked and has too much on her plate.  I try to keep it all straight, who has what job title and what responsibilities go along with it now, and also have to keep up with all of the changes to my accounts, what specific doctors want, etc.  I'm not perfect, I'm getting older and I do forget sometimes.  I E-mailed a question this morning to the wrong person and got severely chewed out for it by my supe. 

I used to love going to work every day because I loved doing medical transcription.  I was so proud of the profession, and when I got married, and the picture of me in the bridal section of the paper was printed, I was so proud that the caption underneath it read that I worked at a certain large medical center as a medical transcriptionist.  Wow.  I felt important.

Now, I just feel so unsure of everything I do.  I'm sorry, but you can't delete 2 departments (QA, QC), switch around supervisors, switch service areas (especially when your line count starts getting really good because you're finally comfortable with those accounts - has anyone else noticed this?  It was my husband who brought it up), change job titles left and right to CCM, CTL, MME, ABCDEFG.  And those employees' job duties change too.  So guess what?  I'm not perfect.  I simply cannot keep track of EVERYTHING.  There was one perfect man, and they crucified him.  I'm not always going to be able to remember 100% which question goes to who or what the job is currently being called, etc.  It's stupid that we have one system to log into for our time sheets, another for the dictation, one for DQM, and the list goes on.   It should be simplified where we have one login that has everything.  Then come all the password change requests.  Some days I feel like my head is spinning.

I have to wonder, is this the way a lot of the big companies are run?  I've been sending out my resume because frankly, the Q is driving me out.  I have no problem doing the dictation or with my lines but damnit - don't yell at me because somebody's job responsibility changed again and I asked the wrong person a question that five weeks ago, she was supposed to answer.  I am just so sick to death of it. 

I would love some input from others on what I've posted.  I realize it's time to get out.  I just need to find the right job.  I keep looking (I still laugh when I applied for a company, did their test, etc. and was hired - by Medquist.  I have no idea why they advertised under a different name)  Lots of praying going on here and lots of resumes and typing tests too. 

I would also love to hear if anyone has similar stories.

Thank you so much for letting me vent.  I loved working here for about 18 months.  Now, the job just smells like feces.