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

What is the time frame for training/ certification for MT'ing .... - curious

Posted: Feb 06, 2011

I am looking for info for a friend who is interested in the field.....I myself got into IC'ing after taking general allied health courses in my college days and many years of on the job experience...not to mention mentoring from a friend. However I realizse not everyone does it this way.....My question is how does someone with no background get started and what is the usual time frame for getting certified.

ic'ing mt'ing - mt without the ing

[ In Reply To ..]
Do you mean the time frame for gaining the education for doing MT?

Or, do you mean the time for being an MT and getting certified?

Obtaining a certificate does not make you certified.

The graduates who do the best have no less than 1 year of training - In my experience

[ In Reply To ..]
If you want to get solid training, it's going to take around a year, so you can get a huge amount of transcription experience with instructors checking your work and guiding you. You'll be able to make most of your worst mistakes while you are in school rather than on the job. Too many times people take the easy way in training and pay for it later by either not finding a job at all or being trapped in jobs with little or no chance for advancement. The best recommendation is to do it right the first time. I've heard so many times about students who graduate from a shorter, easier course only to find that it didn't teach them what employers require from an MT, so they have to start again with another course. I know several who took another shortcut with the second course too. That also didn't work. Do it right the first time. Take a course that covers the material that the major MT employers are going to expect you to know when you graduate.

Also, it needs to be a minimum of 1 year of quality training, not just putting in time - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
It's really important to study with quality training materials and instructors who have been successful doing MT. You'll want to be sure that your work is looked over carefully, because students don't know what they don't know. A truly good instructor will pick up on mistakes that you won't even notice. Not only will they tell you where you are going wrong and need to make changes, they will give you detailed help on exactly how to do that.

A student from a notoriously poor school showed me some of the work that had been graded and sent back to her. Everything was just marked correct or incorrect. No help given at all to teach her why something was correct or why it was wrong. Even worse, some of the answers marked correct were wrong. Apparently there was just an answer key that the grader (not really an instructor) was using to grade the students' work, and it was wrong. That means all of the students of that course are learning things the wrong way. They get through the course fast though and it is cheap. It isn't a good investment of time, effort, and money by any means. Go for a challenging course and give yourself time to actually learn what you're going to be required to know on the job. Don't wait and expect to learn it all on the job, because employers are not schools and don't have the time to teach you. Years ago there was a school that told a friend of mine, "These other schools are teaching too much. You don't need all of those books and materials. You're just going to have to learn it all on the job anyway." Don't believe it. Ask yourself if you were an employer if you would rather have someone who expects to learn it all on the job anyway or someone who has done their very best to be prepared. Yes, that new MT graduate will be slow, but they will have a good foundation that can be built upon and they won't have learned things wrong, requiring breaking bad habits and teaching them new ones. Most of us would not hire again graduates of a school that we know produces graduates who can't do the work the way we want it done.

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