Going back to the old post about

people who don't understand our jobs as MTs, I wanted to add a couple of comments I recently received at a HS reunion about which I just sigh:  When asked what I do for a living, one person said that she learned medical terminology and ShortHand in the past, realized shorthand is no longer used and thought medical transcription was obsolete/now fully automated.  I briefly attempted to explain what MTs do and about automated speech recognition, but she didn't seem too interested.  Another comment I received was how it would be nice to work when you want to; I didn't feel like explaining about having scheduled hours/punching in and out, TAT, production goals, etc., and just let it go...

I think the next time someone asks what I do for a living, I am going to say that somedays I am a magician, most days I'm involved in a race, and that at all times I am required to be a good interpreter! 

• Going back to the old post about - maj
  • Don't care what others think of my career (sm) - So true!!
  • But - Z
    • You make really excellent points. sm - R
      • Working MT - bgunno-mt
        • I was one of those people - telling the truth
          • I thought initially "how hard can it be?" - AgingMt
            • I, like you, thought it would be a piece of cake - Agree completely
              • Was previously a linguist ... sm - sickofit

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You have 2 toddlers who need daycare.

You have a teen (the childsupport)

You have $350 roomie but that + disappears with his costs of living there.  and I would be scared to count on it.

You have $9500 CC bill which that payment is probably about $200 a month.

At $42,000 that is not solid money - it is PT monies. 

1.  Can the BF come up with his probable court-ordered child support of at least $1000 a month? 

2.  Do you make car payments?

3.  How much is your student loan payment - and for how much longer?

4.  Do you have a degree in something?  Should you stay in transcription? 

5.  Can you make the house payments if the BF finks out on the child support in 2 years if your 16 yo moves out and gets married and doesn't attend college?

6.  You will be at an expensive time in your life with the 1 and 2 YO/ who will then be 3 and 4 years old by then and still needing day care.

7.  A house is expensive upkeep.  And much energy.

I agree with the others.  Don't jump the gun here.  Take care of one thing at a time.  Get yourself into a situation where you won't be stressed if there comes a blip in the road - like you break your arm - or the car tears up - or you need an emergency root canal - one of the kids breaks a leg and you need to stay home.  There are a million things. 

I would rent, move BF out, get childsupport started from him to see how that goes, re-look at the budget.

when the FT job comes around, and if you feel it is the one for you and they are good for the money, then look at the house.  You must live for you, not the 16 YO. 

By then you will have your FT monies coming in, the child support coming in, you will know what your extra income is, you will have all your insurances in place and leave time built up, and a house may be good by then.  Also, the market is overvalued right now.  They are saying people buying right now may be buying things that won't be worth what they paid for them in a year. 

Do you have any family you could stay with at all for 6 months.  You need some breathing space, girl. 

Again, good luck.

someone using a heated keyboard -- that might help.  I have used the typing gloves before when my hands/wrists were flaring up, but I generally found they slowed me down a bit.  However, if your fingers and hands are cold and stiff, that slows you down too, so it might be worth it.  Hand-Eze is the only brand name I can think of, but I am sure there are lots of others to choose from.  You can usually find them at places that sell craft supplies, maybe a little less expensive than the sites on the web.  Good luck. 

If we still cannot get an organized group of MT's to write and innundate the senate and congress with letters or some kind of petition than we should all give us and do what a poster said "just give up tilting at windmills"...are you ready to give up?  (PS the first address for the San Francisco Gate is still active and is the full article.  The second address for the Deccan Herald is no longer active. Read the San Francisco Gate article and weep!)

Posted by Georgia gal on January 12, 2004 at 12:51:23:

In Reply to:Form letter to send posted by Lane on January 11, 2004 at 18:45:26:

Hello _______,

As a born and raised American I am appalled at the number of jobs that are being moved overseas by US based companies, all claiming that they need to cut costs. This is hurting the US Economy and boosting the economy for countries such as India and Pakistan. I am a manager with a medical transcription company and our industry has been infiltrated by these other countries. There is growing concern in the medical community regarding HIPAA and overseas transcription, since HIPAA is a US based law and not international. It concerns me greatly that the health care providers that are sending information out of this country are not informing patients of this, and the fact that patient names, social security numbers and other identifying data is made available to people in these other countries.

Recently a medical Transcriptionist in Pakistan threatened the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center that if they didn't pay her off a large fee then she would disclose these patient medical records. Here's their newspaper article that explains in detail what happened:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/10/22/MNGCO2FN8G1.DTL

In addition to that situation, a medical transcriptionist company in Ohio had 2 of their employees in India threaten to publish medical records on the internet because of a pay dispute:

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/nov04/c2.asp

I would appreciate your consideration in supporting or initiating legislation to keep jobs in America, not only for the medical transcription and coding business, but for all American jobs. I would suggest that stiff taxes be placed on any American business that sends work out of this country to the point that it would cost them more money to send work out of this country than leaving it here. In addition, I would like to see the HIPAA laws expanded to state that medical records may not leave this country due to patient confidentiality and security reason.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

I'm not sure how many people they are hiring but you shouldn't stress too hard over it. Do the best you can.

I actually tried to dump a report today, which I never do, because it somehow got into my pool in error (not my area of expertise), but it jumped right back up at me after the next report.  So I decided to just do it.  I don't know how well I did, but I did it.  It was over 150 lines long and took me forever.  Lo and behold, 5 reports later, same guy, same type of report 145 lines. Second time around was easier and faster though.  The way I see it is that if I get negative feedback, I'll let them know that those kind of reports really shouldn't come my way.

But cherry picking for line count is just plain wrong.

The other jobs I took involved quite a bit of computer use, too.  I got tired of the office politics and other garbage, so I'm doing MT again.  Now, I prop my keyboard up with a block of wood, although you can use a telescoping keyboard drawer/shelf to do the same thing.  I have a habit of letting my wrists rest on the keyboard, so I had to modify it to get my hands into the proper position.  It might have helped if I had taken piano lessons.  LOL  The only time my wrists ache now is if I work too much, which has been the case lately.  I don't know if it would be helpful for you to try.  I've been doing data entry or some form of computer input work for 17 years now, so I'm hoping carpal tunnel or repetitive motion injury isn't definitely in my future.

I was told the same about two years ago by recruiter in Midwest.  She did not give specifics, but basically said that the full time employees would get priority if the work was low.