Bravo! Good post. I totally agree. sm

I posted my resume on MT Stars a couple of years ago and, like you, I was flooded with calls.  The company I selected, I didn't even know existed.  I have been a very happy camper for 2 years, plenty of work, decent pay, great tech support, wonderful people who make you feel like "family."  Best move I ever made.

I think maybe the reason why people keep allowing themselves to be used and abused by companies with sporadic work is the known versus the fear of the unknown factor.  Believe me, the stress of starting a new job is small potatoes compared to never knowing you will have enough in your paycheck to cover the bills!

We never went on vacation with our kids and left them with grandparents to come back and find out that our own lack of parenting resulted in somthing that our own kids may have been doing behind our backs all along.

Give me a break. Blame it on gramma?  How about staying home with your kid and taking a good look around to realize that he's the one that's hiding things, not your MIL.

There is obviously a lot of hatred between DIL and MIL here. 

Message for you mom, "get a grip."  This stuff doesn't all happen because their at gramma's for the week. You're obviously doing something wrong here.  Forget your "vacations." and your "rules" and be there for your kids. Teenagers LIE.  It's been going on for centuries.

You can go on "vacation" when they're all grown up and gone.  By the sounds of your message, I would say the sooner they go, the better.

I used to be married to a hunter.  The whole idea felt wrong to me and I hate guns. I haven't had to deal with hunting or guns for 20 years now.

I'm sure I will get blasted by some NRA people for saying I hate guns, but oh well.

Your 16 years of experience has obviously not taught you that there are many different situations in this field that make switching from account to account very difficult.  As the previous poster stated, specifics for accounts can involve much more than formatting, oftentimes involving individual physician specifics, just one point that makes your "docs are docs are docs" theory ridiculous.  Multiply this by 5 or 6 accounts, each having totally different platforms, 50 doctors dictating, half of which are ESL's.  You stated "As an MT you should be able to transcribe any doc out there".  Really?  I would love to test you on a 45 minute arterial bypass graft report transcribed by a doctor right off the boat from Turkey.  Your holier than thou attitude is ignorant, insulting and argumentative. 

When my adult children are here, I feel a need to stop working for short periods of time to go to the mailbox, cook, take out the garbage, etc.  An MT is out his/her best when we hit that "flow"...you know when your fingers are flying in sync and your voice player is on above 100%...but you need to stay in the flow.

When I was on an acute care account, I also did voice recognition and dictated what I was hearing in my headset to save my fingers with a better line count than by using my fingers (never got above 350 with voice, though, as I left the account before I could get higher BUT I was doing this for more than 50 docs).

Having an ergonomic environment does contribute to better productivity as your hands, back, legs, everything feels better and it is easier to get into your flow.  After 25 years of keyboarding, I only have tired muscles in my hands but no symptoms of carpal tunnel (TYG).  I really do encourage people to take advantage of abbreviation Expanders if for no reason other than to save their hands so they can still open jars when they are still in their 50s. 

d~