Thank you so much for the kind words!

• MTSOs, on a scale of 1 to 10, how qualified are - your applicants for acute care work? sm
  • Not just the newbies who cannot be trusted with acute care! - sunny
    • You are right - Me
      • This is encouraging. Thank you for posting. - nm
  • Out of 20 I hire, maybe 1 will be good enough to keep! - tired MT
    • Gee...are you at all aware of the degree of negativity you have? If your negative... sm - AnnaD
  • Most applicants GROSSLY overestimate their abilities - - no name, no state
    • Testing isn't free either - Me
      • Wow! Ridiculous! I've heard it all now. - nm
  • Are all the bad applicants necessarily newbies????? - just checking
    • Absolutely not. In my recruting experience many were old-timers having worked - for large nationals for years! sm
      • This newbie thanks you. - nm
  • Well, I am sorry to hear about all the problems - you're having with newbies! - sm
  • I think there are a huge number - QA also
    • May not be lying.. *certain* companies never bothered to check their work. - Amazing what I have seen. nm
      • Yes I think so too - Me
    • Here, here. Exactly my experience also, even down to the 10 year work experience. nm - Why do you think they pick 10 years?
      • When I became an MT supe many of my problem MTs - sm
  • What does this tell you? (sm) - QA'r
    • On mine, many MTs with 10+ yrs exp. SHOULD be on 100% QA! - Even scarier. QAer2 NM
    • This should tell MTSOs to value their REAL MTs sm - nm
  • I would have to say the MTs my company hires--sm - just QA person
  • I have very few applicants who can even do easy clinic notes, - forget about acute care
    • OK. Double wow. Same newbie here doing well. - I guess I went to a good school! - nm
  • You can't imagine.... - me
    • Amazing - newbie
      • How many lines are you producing a day? - You go girl!
        • I produce around 1000 lines per day... - newbie
          • That will change - once you start - NM
          • Good for you; you're a natural born MT and I wish you well. nm - Sadly, I think you're a nice exception from mos
            • Thank you so much for the kind words! - newbie
      • It's great you are doing so well. Are you doing all work - types, including ops, and ESLs? nm
        • Also Psych and ER....forgot about those! - newbie
        • Yes, I do everything - newbie
    • Wow. I'm a newbie MT, and I can do waaaay - better than that! - sm

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and suggestions.  It means a lot to me.  I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I believe something better will come along...but it feels good to share my frustrations with those of you who have been there, done that, and got the T-shirt!

I better go to work!  Have a great weekend everyone and Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

Just Me

What I was trying to do with my original post was spark some healthy dialog, and boy did I!   It’s clear that few are without an opinion on this one, from those who took my fanciful VR language as a true and scary representation of what VR produces each and every time (yike!) to the more Borg-minded crowd (Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated.)   My point – and I actually do have one – is in the title of  Judge Judy Sheindlin’s book:  Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining.  I don’t necessarily see VR as an intentional move by our MTSOs to cheat us out of money, but I also don’t see them taking the 30-50% cut in profits they are expecting us to suffer. 

Somewhere between steeling ourselves for a career move that includes saying  *Do you want fries with that?* and allowing ourselves to get all borgified  by our employers’ switch to VR there must be a middle ground.  I just have not thought of it yet.   Anybody have an idea what that might be?  Instead of just bitching and catastrophizing about this, I would like some constructive suggestions for peaceful resistance, should employer tell me my account is switching next month. 

I've been in the profession a long time and I was actually surprised that I could not do the ESL and some of the other Docs at FN.  I've written twice about FN on this board, and I tried to give some of the positives, there were plenty of those too.  When I see how the MTs at some of the big nationals have to punch in and punch out, can't flex their time at the keyboard, have to use up PTO when there's no work available, get switched around without notice, I think FN is probably a whole other, superior culture to work in.  Experience is valued, consistency and regular production is appreciated, the line count as I have said in an earlier post is always correct, the checks are on time (so didn't really need direct deposit once I got used to waiting the few days it took to cut the checks.  My direct supervisor seemed to make assumptions about some situations without asking my version of who said what when, and that was a sore point with me.  They do assess a small monetary charge when certain mistakes are made, per employee handbook this is supposed to kick in after 90 days of employment, but I got my first official notice in my first month, while I was still learning the ropes. I did get quite a few calls about jobs that I never had in my queue being missing, when I never had them in the first place, resulting in having to do them and send them right away.  I kept daily written logs so I knew that I did not have these jobs in my queue. 

The quota is 1200 lines a day times 10 in the pay period to qualify for employee status and benefits, and there were quite a few days with no work available for the full 6-8 hours it would have taken to do the 1200 at my skill level,  and I never could get a straight answer about health insurance although it was a condition agreed upon when I was hired. 

I was sorry to leave, because although I really was unhappy with the quantity and quality of the dictation I hated to just give up.  Should say the sound quality was superb, it was just the actual Docs mumbling, snorting, whatever, that made doing the work so hard, and the general attitude seemed to be to just get used to it. 

My thought on the matter would be that I felt that it might have worked out and I might have stayed with FN because of the 90 percent great people, but only if it had been possible to work in-house for a while or at least to have instant message to some of the QA people so I could ask the questions BEFORE I had to send the report in, rather than getting a marked up report, or as more usual, just an e-mail with the missing words after the audio of the report was long gone.  I don't know about you but I am best at building my knowledge of any Doc's dictating style if I can research in my books, then on the net, then inquire of the QA in charge of my account, all BEFORE sending in a report, instead it went the other way around and I often had to send in what looked like it was not my best work, but in reality was my best effort. 

They DO load their LARGE program on your computer, and although I purchased a new XP computer with all the bells and whistles for the job, the platform had many wrinkles in it, seemed to cause problems with importing the demographics, and did lock up on 3 or 4 occasions, causing a 1/2 day loss of work. 

Well that's a long post all right, hope you'll forgive me if you've made it this far, but I decided I should put down all the bad AND the good in one post to see if it helps some people make up their mind.  I'm well aware that it may have been my problem all along and that I was just not suited to the particular matchup of company, platform, and accounts. 

Good luck to everyone searching, it is a frightening and tiring process.  Hope it works out great for you wherever you decide to work. 

Hello-- I do know for a fact that the company is legit, as I live in the same city as the company. Dont know much about pay, although I do remember that they pay by the dictated minute. Hope this helps!

That would be Belleville, IL.

is not the best. Any poor MTs coming from MQ have been beaten to death by now - they don't need another company that is not THE BEST. Let's see - what was I being tactful and leaving out? It takes 4-ever and a day to actually start - criminal background checks - yeah, I know, no big deal, but still creepy - physical exams, and plenty of other hoops - probably a month to get started. Computers were garbage and platform was down often, though none in my account received 1 cent of downtime pay. Platform antiquated and also allowed for prime cherry picking. As a newby, I used to watch the good work get sucked right out of my pool from my coworkers. Backstabbing galore, office politics, no supervision whatsoever. Pay was on the low side, but was told it was due to how great hospital accounts were - not really. MTs expected to adhere to a strict schedule - quality of work was poor as we got hospital leftovers from inhouse staff. DR also has had run-ins with the labor board and were found guilty of whatever it was they were caught doing. So, yes, let these comments scare you - check the company board archives - always lots of negative about DR. In fact, this is the first time I have ever read positives, so I honestly suspect its their recruiter trying to snag some newbies. DR was even posted about just last week - go thru pages and search for them. Good luck to you! Definitely not a good replacement for MQ. If you're close to the breakdown point, as I was when I left MQ, DR is likely to push you right over the edge.

I most times start with Google and then make sure it is spelled correctly by looking it up in the medical dictionary.  I also use a Word Book that just gives medical words but no definitions.  That helps to narrow things down sometimes too. 

I'm wondering why the above poster said to get Ortho Words.  Is that a must for all types of specialties in your opinion?  I don't have one but would get one if it is helpful.   I do Radiology so you would think that would be good for me anyway.  Think I'm going to go to Amazon.com right now and order one.