I'm a steno writer
Posted By: Dave on 2008-04-18
In Reply to: Question for Fast MTs - Hoping
I went to school to learn how to use a steno machine, like in court, to "type" my medical reports. I have been doing this since 2000. I trained at 225 words per minute back in the day, so now I have a reservoir of speed to draw from when dictation speeds up. I rarely need to lift my foot off the pedal with steno.
I think steno is the fastest way to produce a report, but now that MQ is forcing us to do ASR work, I am not using my machine as much. To me, this is unacceptable since they only pay 70% of our base line rate for ASR. I have hung in there so far, but I'm fast approaching the need to get out of MQ since I used to produce 2000 lines a day easily with steno, way less now on ASR reports.
They say ASR is 30% faster than non-ASR thus they justify knocking off 30% of our base rate. Not true. ASR has slowed me way down, can barely make the minimum each day. Last I heard, they will not take us off ASR if we request it. I'm getting madder by the week and losing tons of money in the process.
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MT-steno
Well, learning machine ShortHand isn't the easiet thing in the world. I think it is what you make of your practice time. I'm returning to an online school for this in the near future.
Good luck!
steno vs ASR
Today's steno machines are electronic and computerized so they hook up to the back of the computer. Then we use a CAT program to translate steno Keystrokes into English using a dictionary of steno/English entries. The translation occurs before getting back to the computer word program that is active on the screen. The screen only sees QWERTY, not steno. It's all highly technical and I don't know it all, but I do know that steno is way faster than longhand typing for me, and way faster than ASR.
Steno
Wow! If you're already doing 250-350 lph in long hand then you don't need to steno!
Steno for MT
I have used a steno machine for 10 years and if you are already doing 250-300 lines an hour you are beating me. I get around 250 on a good day and really with the dictators and filling in ADT information I would think it would be hard to do much more than that even if you never stopped except for spell check, sending reports, et cetera. Learning the machine is no piece of cake either, took me years. I passed my 200s, but never could pass all my 225s, so never got to be a court reporter. I can keep up with most dictators, but they back up, change their minds, et cetera, so it is not like you can sit down and write without a break, so it is difficult to do a lot more than you are doing right now.
Just my opinion.
steno for mt
Hi Julie,
I'm not sure if I have emailed you before, but I saw your post about using your steno machine for medical transription. I've passed all of my 120's, and I am thinking of making the switch and going to school for medical transcription. Do you think it can be a lucrative endeavor? Did you just add medical terms to your dictionary as they came up? I use CaseCatalyst software. How did you make the transition? Anything you could tell me would be great.
Thanks
Lorraine
steno machine
What kind of steno machine did you purchase to help you?
Steno transcription
Yes, it is definitely possible to use a steno machine and do transcription. I have done so for over 10 years. I never could pass all my tests to be a court reporter, so finally decided to use that skill in medical transcription and has worked out great for me.
learning steno, et al.
Hi mt,
I looked into closed captioning many years ago here in San Diego, but it was not as good as it sounded with many problems both internally and externly, hard to explain in this forum, but I didn't want to get involved in that mess.
I started court reporting school way back in 1988 when we still had saber tooth tigers running around. I started the program at San Diego's City College. The first semester was learning theory which taught the steno language and the keyboard. We used the old manual machines, which are still available for students. The second semester and thereafter was all about the dreaded speed-building classes. We finished the first semester at 60 words a minute. Speed-building is a very personal matter. It can take years and years or less time, depending on the person. It took me 2 more years to reach 225 words per minute which qualified me to take the California state board test for licensure. I passed the academic portion the first time but not the machine portion. So I took it another 6 times, never passed that damned thing! Nerves got the best of me each and every time, so I could not go into the court reporting field (something I don't regret in hindsight). Instead I opted to enter our wonderful field of MTing.
I'm using my machine to write this message. I really like using the machine a lot. Each stroke produces either one word several words or phrases or parts of words that have many syllables. It all depends on how you have your dictionary defined.
Today's steno machines are electronic and computerized allowing us to interface with any word processing program.
I hope more people learn this skill and start using it for medical reports so we can get rid of this rotten ASR chap which has reduced my income way more than I can live with. I need a firm that will appreciate my skill and recognize its value in this field.
BTW, it would only take about 10 months to a year to become proficient enough on the machine to start using it for MTing, maybe even less time depending on the person. I didn't work during 3 years of my early training as I had financial help at the time (which I had to pay back, of course, $30,000 - it's paid back now).
Dave
Does anyone use Steno for MT work?
Could you tell me about how many lines per hour etc you type using steno. I've found a local college that offers a court reporting course and have thought it might be worth the investment if it could speed me up some more. I'm doing 250-350 lines per hour with a qwerty keyboard right now.
Thanks a bunch.
Do you use your steno machine to transcribe? nm
nm
Has anyone ever done steno transcription? What is involved? Is it
most importantly, are there jobs out there available? Toni
I can't testify to the steno pads
But when I started I used tapes and a selectric typewriter with 3 carbon copies. We used to use a scapel blade to correct the carbon copies and then slide a little piece of carbon paper in to re-type the correction.
I think it started going downhill when the MTSO's started showing up more and more. Only because, they cut the wages because after all, you got to stay at home, didn't have to pay for work clothes, transportation, meals, etc. And you could write off part of your house mortgate, utilities, etc. as long as you had a room that used only as an office. Everyone bought into it saying they wanted to work at home and thus they bought into the little less in wages that they offered. I still think there is a distinct advantage to knowing the doc's you are transcribing for. Working in a clinic or a hospital and getting to know the doc's make it alot easier to look at them and tell them they sound like they are gargling with peanut butter, they acutally laugh, and listen and I found they would make a bigger effort to be a better dictator because of it. Better dictators = easier to type = faster TAT = less errors = less need for as much editing. We used to transcribe all day and our work never went to QA (what was QA) QA was the doc complaining about our work which = counseling from your supervisor = getting written up = out the door if you didn't fix the problem. That was what it was like when I first started 30 years ago. I didn't have google, I had little notes taped all over my workstation for those words I had never heard before until they came naturally to me, then that piece of paper was replaced by another one. I had what I called my "bible" of phrases, etc. certain doctor's always said, no short cuts or expanders, we typed it all out. That was real transcription.
I think you'd be a great writer. (U already are.) - nm
x
Question for the steno machine user
I keep remembering how much faster you said it is than typing and I am wondering how one would go about learning how to use one? Is it something that can be self-taught with a book? Would I likely be able to find a good used machine? Also, will they work with any transcribing software?
I am a slow MT and need all the help I can get!  Thanks for any further information you can give me.
lanier voice writer
Does anyone know of any companies that still use these? I am a die hard Lanier fan! Thanks.
She is a great writer. I read
In the Meantime, by that author, she used to be on Oprah a long time ago. Thanks for the poem, enjoyed it, especially the last line.
lanier voice writer
 HELP! I'm going crazy. All of a sudden my foot pedal went down on this unit - I have opened it and replugged a million times to no avail. Any solutions or suggestions/ Thanks!
Writer and PT marketing consultant
z
Meant professional writer. Know what HIM is. Sorry. nm
X
Lanier Voice Writer 1000
Client uses phone in Lanier Voice Writer 1000 with MTs coming into the office to transcribe. What is necessary to hire at home transcriptionists with this system? Are there tapes involved, will a c-phone work or can you not hire at home transcriptionists with this system? Thank you for any help you may have.
What do you need a Master's Degree in to be a science writer?
?
For all the fans, very interesting insight from the writer of the show.
Shonda Rhimes long take on part two:
From Shonda: It's the end of the episode (as we know it)
Original Airdate: 2-12-06
So Dylan’s dead.
And I have to admit, I’m a teeny bit relieved.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Kyle Chandler. He was great as Dylan. Smart, funny, cute, and very much in charge. I was, in fact, a little bit in love with Dylan. Not as in love as I am with McDreamy or Burke but…you know, there were moments during the filming of the episodes when Dylan would be saying something bossy or helping Mer down the hall, pushing that gurney and being all bomb squad-y, moments that I was thinking, hey, maybe he doesn’t have to explode.
But still I am relieved. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. Here’s why:
At the end of Act Five, there is a scene. Scene 52. I wrote this scene about fifteen minutes before I had to print out the script and hand it over to production. It reads as follows:
INT. OR CORRIDOR -- CONTINUOUS
Meredith leans her head out. Sees Dylan heading down the hall. She's just about to open her mouth...
...When the ammo explodes. When Dylan explodes. Fire, shattering glass. Meredith is thrown backwards.
Okay, that’s…what? An eighth of a page? A sixteenth of a page? A tiny fraction of the script, right?
The ammo explodes.
Dylan explodes.
I wrote those words and was actually ignorant enough of the horrors to come that I gave it to the production team and then slept the sleep of babies and angels for several nights in a row.
The ammo explodes.
Dylan explodes.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
All of the sudden, you find yourself in meetings with real live bomb squad guys and special effects guys and a very tense director and everyone is asking you things like “When you say, bloody rain…you actually want bloody rain or just like, some blood spatter?” And things like “When Dylan explodes, you wanna see chunks of Dylan or do you want like, a Dylan vapor?”
These are thing I don’t want to think about. These are things that make my head hurt. The ammo explodes. Dylan explodes. It’s in the script. I wrote it. I know that. But I don’t want to think about Dylan chunks or bloody rain. I don’t want to think about it at all. I like to write things and have them happen. I like to keep myself in a kind of stalker-ish fog in which I believe my characters aren’t characters but actual people. It’s how I can write them. So when you ask me about Dylan chunks, my brain gets all twisty and shuts down. Because Dylan’s a person, a very real person to me and I love him and it’s not my fault he has to die and besides…yuck.
But I’ve got Rob Corn on my ass.
Rob Corn doesn’t care if I try to kick everyone out of my office when they bring up bloody rain or he doesn’t care if I try to pretend I can’t speak English when someone asks me about bloody chunks. Rob Corn is the producer on our show and it’s his job to make things happen and, if I am stupid enough to write Dylan explodes on a piece of paper, Rob Corn is damn well going to make sure that Dylan explodes. Behind his back, I like to call Rob Corn Bossy McBossy. It doesn’t sound affectionate here but in real life, it’s really sweet and kind. Trust me. Anyway, Bossy McBossy told me that we had to do tests so we could figure out how exactly Dylan explodes.
Tests? Dylan explodes. What’s there to test? HA! I’m clearly an idiot.
They built this model of Dylan’s body and one day I am herded out onto the back lot of the studio at the request of Bossy McBossy Rob Corn. Then I have to stand and watch as 20 or 30 really happy guys (testosterone is a powerful thing) position the model of Dylan just right and explode it into tiny little pieces. Twice. It is very loud. Wow. Dylan explodes. I’m all, “great, thanks, way to go, very manly.” And I turn to flee, prepared to head back to my office, happy that the Dylan explodes part of this is over so I can pay attention to the other stuff, the estrogen stuff, the fun stuff like Bailey and George giving birth and Derek describing that kiss to Meredith…
…But Rob Corn raises an eyebrow and very gently says, “Uh, Shonda?” and I go really still with horror. Because I suddenly start to realize that a) that little test was only the beginning and b) that, for the rest of my life, I was going to regret ever typing the words Dylan explodes into my computer.
They blew up test dummies. Tall dummies, dusty dummies, dummies with helmets, dummies without helmets. They blew up test dummies filled with fake blood. They blew up pieces of our set. They set off an explosion on the set of our operating rooms. They used stunt girls and stunt guys. Ellen let them pull her through the air. I think there were blue screens and green screens and animated pieces of debris and glass. The genius special effects guys added fire and smoke and things I can’t imagine but things that made it amazing. The sound guys added over 100 layers of sound elements so that, if you have HD and you watch with surround sound speakers, the explosion flies at you and passes you and swirls around you.
Dylan explodes.
The explosion was beautiful. Amazing work and truly impressive. I told everyone so. I can’t believe the amount of talent and energy that come together to make this show happen. But next time I get a Super Bowl and post-Super Bowl time slot, I’m gonna write something different. Something a bit easier. Something less time-consuming and expensive. And without so many bloody chunks.
Dylan puts the ammo down and goes to have a sandwich.
Enough about Dylan, may he rest in peace. I want to tell you about the difference between the first episode titled “It’s the End of the World” and the second episode “(As We Know It)”.
I tried really hard to make the first episode very male and the second episode very female. I wanted them to fit together, like puzzle pieces. So that I could have two episodes about the same thing but that felt very different from one another. The first episode is all amped up energy, all naked girls and screaming and bombs and running down hallways and men saying things like “Get out of my OR.” The second episode is all long pauses. Long pauses and sitting and pushing out babies and kissing in linen closets and lots of discussion about how the hell this is all going to end. The first episode is what happens when danger strikes. The second episode is how we deal with danger when it strikes. The epicenter of this episode is the hallway/gurney scene. It’s the first scene I envisioned at all when thinking of these two episodes. I kept saying, “there needs to be this scene where Meredith and Cristina move down the hall really slowly with the ammo and Dylan and talk about boys.” And everyone kept nodding very politely with tight smiles the way they do when they are sure you have gone off the deep end. But Elizabeth Klaviter (she’s our super smart medical researcher) got on the phone with the bomb squad guys and the doctors and she got them to tell her how this would be possible. How I could get that gurney rolling so Meredith and Cristina could discuss the state of Cristina’s relationship. I needed that discussion which, for me, is really just a big old metaphor for how we deal with the tragedies in life. You’ve got your hand on a bomb but you don’t want to talk about it over and over, you don’t want to face it – so you talk about something else. Most of life is talking about something else. Plus, I found this really cool song by The Greenskeepers that I was dying to use.
George is a big key to this episode. If you pay attention, he’s the one who serves as our witness. Through most of the episode, he wanders around, a bit bewildered. He’s the one who feels the most helpless. And then he has that moment with Hannah where she talks about the nature of cowardice, where she says that to do nothing is to be a coward. And he acts. He helps Bailey through giving birth. In the first episode, he’s fantasizing about what it would be like to see three women in the shower. In the second episode, he sees what three women in a shower is like in reality. Because, guys, women don’t just climb in a shower and start soaping each other up for no reason. Hello!? Life isn’t porn. Life is Meredith, bloody and battered, being gently cleaned off (chunks of Dylan) by her best friends. And so he leaves. Because what he is seeing is too intimate.
The last thing I want to say about this episode has to do with Meredith. Because all she really wants is some kind of reason to live. I’ve heard a lot of talk about Meredith being whiny but the truth is, she’s got a mom with Alzheimer’s, no other family to speak of, and the man she loves is married. She’s pretty freaking lonely, people. She’s got a right to get her whine on. So, when she falters, when she doesn’t want to pull her hand out of Mr. Carlson, it’s partly because she’s got nothing to hang on to. As she says in the first episode, she needs a reason to go on, she needs some hope. Which is why she has to picture Derek to get through it. And at the end, when he shows up at her house (and he shows up just to see for himself that she is alive), she has to ask. She has to ask him about their last kiss because if she’s ever going to get out of that bed again and keep going, she needs a reason. She needs to know there’s someone out there for her. She needs some hope. And Derek (can Patrick Dempsey be any more amazing?) describes that last kiss, the last kiss they had as a happy couple, in such perfect detail that Meredith knows she’ll be okay. Because he wouldn’t remember that kiss so well if he didn’t love her. He couldnt. Its her sign.
He loves her. Even if he can’t be with her. Even if he has a wife.
He loves her, people.
I told you, there’s hope.
I can’t promise you anything because, like I said earlier, the characters are alive for me and thus, I can’t make them do anything against their will. But my fingers and toes are crossed for the Mer/Der love…
Once again, thanks for watching the show.
Anything by Elie Wiesel...he is an amazing person/writer..nm
nm
Too bad the writer didn't address the true reasons why this is not
an attractive field to enter.
Who in their right mind would spend time and money training in a dying profession? Can you say EMR, ASR?
Who in their right mind would spend time and money to train for a job which conceiveably could end up paying minimum wages, few benefits, little reward?
How many have spent time and money training only to find there are few companies who will hire newbies, few companies who offer flexible work schedules, few companies who work with you to make a living wage rather than to throw you into a pool of accounts guaranteed to keep your wages low?
How many expert MTs have left the profession due to reasons above?
CEOs need to wake up and take care of the excellent MTs they can manage to retain; quit messing with our paychecks with creative line counting, quit throwing multiple accounts at us and then expect 1000s of lines a day, quit basing our health insurance on production rather than hours worked; quit expecting us to be happy to work outside our scheduled hours because you provided no work within our scheduled hours with your too tight TATs, and on and on.
How often do I recommend this profession to young people? Never.
I'll write it..I am a professional freelance writer as well as an MT
Let the ideas roll!
digital phoneline with Lanier voice writer
I recently had my unlimited long distance suspended because of the time I was putting in on the lanier voice writer. I as going to switch to digital through the cable company with a data line added for access to dial tone. Does anyone have any suggestions good or bad on the digital phone line used with the LAnier voicewriter. Please let me know.
Thank, Lisa
I just sent it to 60 Minutes staff writer - You guys help me- please read
Who ever mentioned sending it to Lou Dobbs, Dateline, or anybody else, please send this along yourself and name who you sent it to here on this site, so it is not duplicated to the same person too much. Girls, I don't want any credit for this - I just want someone to look into this who has access to any credible sources and figures. What ever it takes to get this out there - please help me do it. We are talking about 30 MILLION jobs and counting. I have already sent it on whitehouse.gov and to 2 newspapers. Copy the thing. Spread it around as much as you can and encourage others to do the same.
Sitcom & screenplay writer/philanthropist. - no message
:)
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