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

So should I just forego my MT 2 year degree and go on to my bachelors degree in something else compl - katiekamrad

Posted: Mar 08, 2010

After hearing all the hum drum about the future of new medical transcriptionists on this website, I'm starting to feel like a real numskull for even choosing my 2 year degree in medical transcription. It just seems like there's no hope for new medical transcriptionists these days.

Should I just get any regular job and just go for my bachelors degree in something completely different? Since I've been posting on hear for the last week and so far the answers to my questions have been:

A) The college that I've gone to (Rasmussen) was not a good college.

B) Because I already got let go of a brief 2 month home medical transcription job because of punctuation and grammar mistakes and because I failed only 2 transcription tests that I've only taken that I didn't get a proper education and I should complain to the school and

C) my chances of getting a new medical transcription job are slim to none because I graduated 6 months ago and I don't have a secure job and people that don't get a job within 6 months of graduation are considered unhirable because their skills are "rusted".

I feel deflated about my once hopeful career as a home medical transcriptionist and feel I have to do the dreaded task of searching for jobs I previously left to go to school for medical transcription.

What is really in our future for new medical transcriptionists that have a rusty beginning in the medical transcription job world????

Please excuse any misspellings on my initial post. - katiekamrad

[ In Reply To ..]
I realize in some of my posts that I have little mispellings...please excuse that everybody...when I'm not clocked on, I really don't care about my spelling errors, but I know other MT's look out for that.
ie hear = here.

Unfortunately you probably don't have a "transfer degree" - which can be a problem.

[ In Reply To ..]
Most 2-year allied health degrees (MT, medical assistant, pharmacy tech, etc.) are "terminal" degrees, meaning that they include a lot of credits that can't be transferred to bachelor degree programs, which would leave you with only your "general education" credits (like English 101) to transfer. In some terminal degree programs this might mean only 15 to 18 semester hours would transfer, which is almost like starting over.

Even courses like Anatomy in such programs are often nontransferrable because they're not "university-level" versions of those subjects. They're (excuse me) watered-down versions, and often don't even include a lab (dissection, etc.).

However, awhile back I did run across a university that has an online two-year "bachelor's completion" program in Healthcare Management or something like that for people with such degrees and accepts everything from the terminal degree. Unfortunately I can't think now which one it was. Perhaps someone on the board knows.

Also, there's a lot of competition for students these days among "second-tier" private universities (these are regionally accredited just like the ivy league schools, but they're not the cream of the crop. Examples would be Phoenix University, City University and IT Tech) and they have more latitude as to what credits they will accept, so that's another option. They usually dump credits for things like your transcription courses into an "elective courses" bucket.

Among these schools, I've heard that APUS (American Public University System, which includes American Public University and American Military University, as well as a junior college) is fairly liberal in their transfer policies and they achieved full regional accreditation a couple of years ago.

Last, most if not all of the schools that are "DETC-accredited" would probably take most, if not all, of your credits, but you'd have to make a judgment about the value of a degree from such institutions because DETC is regarded as an inferior accreditation (compared with the traditional regional accreditation, which is what is usually meant by "accredited") by some employers. Also some professional certifying bodies don't accept degrees from DETC schools to meet their educational requirements. And, if you decide to do graduate work, your bachelor's probably won't be accepted by a regionally-accredited school. However, there are DETC-accredited universities that have grad programs.

DETC = Distance Education and Training Council, incidentally. They have a website and you can find a listing of all the schools they accredit.

Even in the case of the DETC schools, your choice of major in the bachelor's program might impact how many of your 2-year degree credits would transfer. In other words, if you were to choose a major completely outside the healthcare domain, like Accounting or Business Management, they might be more reluctant to transfer all of your credits. There's a little bit of a Catch-22 here, because they have an incentive to force you to take more of their courses, obviously, but at the same time they don't want to be so harsh about transferring credit that you choose another school!

Hope this helps!

Forget these people. You don't even know if they ARE - MTs. Just a group of naysayers.

[ In Reply To ..]
Like ANY career, you have to be patient to get into it. You'll be fine.

I wouldn't let some of these negative ninnies keep me from doing what I want to do.

You don't even know who they are.

Uh huh - anon

[ In Reply To ..]
Let's encourage people to become MTs so that they can make minimum wage (if that). Why not apply the effort somewhere else, maybe in a field that will get her somewhere.

companies seldom hire newbies in these times - new

[ In Reply To ..]
they stick with experienced MTs.

They mention it often in their application site:

"No offshore and newbies, please."

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