Fighting fatigue after 4 hours

• How do you fight fatigue? - me
  • I have a treadmill, 10-15 minutes, jumps my start. - mt24
  • You have to get up and stretch, go for a walk - stacy
  • Power naps. - nm
    • Fighting fatigue after 4 hours - Shirley
      • Thanks! nm - me

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I find that after a certain amount of hours, say 4 or 5, my arms and hands turn to jelly, and my body gets sore and fatigued from sitting in a chair. It is to the point where I actually dread working. And it's not because the work is hard, because it isn't. It's because it takes a lot of of me physically.

My question is, what are some tips to help fight fatigue? It's almost to the point where I want to only do MT for 4 hours and find another job to do for 4 hours a day, one that doesn't demand so much physically. Although I wouldn't mind doing this until I retire, what it does to your body pretty much has made that not an option for me.

I had adrenal fatigue from excessive blood loss from a miscarriage; the symptoms were entirely different-feeling from menopause/perimenopause. 

I do second the black cohosh, as well as 'dong quai', which is a Chinese women's herb.

I was on HRT, started feeling 'hinky' about being on all those hormones, and just stopped them on my own; titrated the HRT down, and then started with the black cohosh and dong quai.  Completely stopped the hot flashes, and fatigue and 'fuzziness' I was feeling. 

seeing one of those earlier Star Wars movies, maybe the first one, and some guy next to me had a little about 2-1/2 to 3 with him.  That kids are TERRIFIED, keping asking "what's that Daddy, why's he doing that Daddy, DADDY DADDY!"

Have people lost their brains?  Kids can't process all this stuff.  Let them watch Thomas the Train or Little Bear and let them be kids.

I'm in the process of fighting the planning/building of a super Wal-Mart down the street from where I live, which is out in a rural neighborhood, about 4 miles from town.  I liken this incredible increase in Wal-Marts across the US as very similar to what is happening in the MT world.  Wal-Mart gets something like 80-85% of their merchandise from other countries--it's just like outsourcing!  Think of all the jobs that have been lost to this in our country.

I understand what some of you are saying about not having the money to pay a few dollars more on whatever it is that you want to buy, but it's no different from transcription!  Those who are outsourcing the transcription to foreign countries are very similar to what Wal-Mart does with its suppliers.

Where does this leave our country?  It's certainly scary for the future of our children in the United States.

Blanks are not your problem.  Poor dictators are.

It has become a standard in the industry to make the problems of an ineffective dictator and make it an MT problem.

This is not and was never an MT problem.  We are required to transcribe in English, and the oral work coming in needs to meet an acceptable English standard.

I've been in the business for 15 years, and frankly I am sick of it.  Having exhausted every other resource to resolve this problem it is now time to fight back and sue these companies and the facilities who have made this our problem.

We are TRANSCRIPTIONSTS, not TRANSLATORS OR LINGUISTS.  If we are required to translate, they need to cough up the average salary of an interpretter which by the way is $200,000 a year.  I dare say none of us are making that as MTs.  The time has passed when someone else's disability directly impacts our paycheck when it is not our skill in question.  Enough is enough.

If you or anyone else is interested in pursuing this stand up with me and make your voices heard.  Send me an email.  I will keep your information confidential. The industry will never change as long as we continue to allow them to abuse us.  

NO MORE SWEAT SHOP LABOR.  THE FREE RIDE IS OVER.  IF THESE COMPANIES AND HOSPITALS WANT IT TRANSCRIBED IN ENGLISH, GIVE US A MINIMALLY ACCEPTED ORAL ENGLISH TO TRANSCRIBE. 

Imagine the Christmas their families are having.  I am so grateful to them all. 

you slice it, both companies will still get 8 hours worth of work out of you.

That is the problem I've been having lately being an MT.  Companies want to pay us on production and they set minimum productivity standards, but want us timed in for 8 hours a day.  My thinking is, if they want 8 hours of work out of me, pay me hourly with production incentive.  If they want to pay me on production and tell how much I have to produce in an 8 hour period, then when I hit that mark, I should be able to call it a day even if I've only worked 4 hours.

Seems these companies want it both ways and it is simply not fair to us MTs.  JMO, tho.

but 14 hours to get a decent line count.

If you are an employee and have a schedule to work, then you should work all of your hours. Generally services don't hire you to do so many lines per day (although you will always have a minimum goal), but to work 40 hours/week as a full time employee. One of the biggest problems is those who agree to a schedule and then just decide they don't have to work it. If you can get your "quota" in 6 hours, what will be expected is that you simply are able to do more work on that day.

And BTW, never any such thing as a dumb question! :)

That broke down to 1881 lines in my usual overnight shift (I've done 1950 before but usually average more like 1200-1400/shift), then far less productive the rest of the day as I had both children home (daughter homeschools; son was sick).

Thank you all for being so very encouraging.    I didn't expect that . . . I've seen other posts about production where the OP got hammered for bragging.

My method is normals; I save a copy of practically every report I transcribe (no patient info, just the body).  Even if I only do the same dictator twice, I save a lot of lines on headings, especially since my primary account has highly formatted headings.  While I love Instant Text and have been using Expanders for 12 years, I believe the combination of normals and expanders produces far greater productivity.

Think the service will notice?  I love them dearly, but they've been in a sparse-communication mode of late.

1600 lines/day is great!  The service I work for says their top MTs average 1300-1400/day.

Never takes me more than two to three but then I have everything gathered and ready to put in.  Even the first time I used TT it only took 3 hours or so.  And now shorter since it downloads last years info.   But give yourself 4-5 hours on a Sunday afternoon.   I usually do it, let it sit, and then recheck it before sending it in.

$3000 sounds like a lot but you don't say how many hours a day and how many days per month you work...if you work 12 hours a day/30 days a month that isn't very good ($8.33 hour) but if you work 8 hours a day/20 days a month that is much better ($18.75).  No one can know if that $3000 is good or not without this info.

I work about 8 to 10 hours a day, five days a week.  Of course, sometimes I spread that time over the weekend too...but I work about 40 to 50 hours over a seven day time period.  I have been there, making little money and typing all day and not getting anywhere, but I stuck with it and I asked for a raise and got it, and now I feel like I'm finally making some money...but making 7 or 8 cents per line...you almost have to kill yourself to make a lot of money.  I would not start with a company, at this point, for less than 10 cents a line. 

I hope this helps give a better guidline!