I've proofread legal documents; not difficult, but extremely dull.
Posted By: sm on 2005-09-15
In Reply to: Legal transcription - momof4
In addition to MT QA, I worked for a large law firm proofreading about 15 hours per week. The pay was good. The work was incredibly dull. The terminology was new and different at first, of course, but there are resources on the web for legal terminology just as there are for medical terminology.
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- Legal transcription - momof4
- I've proofread legal documents; not difficult, but extremely dull. - sm
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When I stressed the important of having medical documents (legal documents)
on the patient's chart (there are outpatient exams done. Hospital is in the outpatient business), the woman said that if there is a serious finding on an exam, the radiologist will call the referring physician and tell him by phone!
This, my friends, is the result of hiring people who have no real background in the medical field (the lead MT never worked anywhere prior to this job, got on-the-job training and has, through a dominant personality, created a tight circle of workers which are marked up of friends from her life and church services over a 15 year period.
OMG!!!
Legal documents
I worked for an attorney for a while and also have a 2500 page transcript from my BIL's federal drug case and everything was done on legal sized paper - lots of quotes, etc. I wouldn't do editing of that sort of work for $1 a page - or even $3 - $6-$10 - yes. There's probably more money in that than there is in transcription - we MTs just haven't found it yet.
I'm not a very "outgoing" person and I find extremely difficult to sell myself. So the ide
going door to door selling myself causes me to have a major anxiety attack! But here is my two cents anyway. I work FT for a local hospital from home, but I have two of my own accounts I do on the side. My biggest piece of advice is always carry a business card, ALWAYS! Wherever you're at, make sure you have them in your purse. I have found that when I go the new doctor's office, like for example recently I was referred to a dermatologist for a mole removal. While there the doctor chit chatted with me and asked me what I did and I said I was a transcriptionist. She asked how long I had been doing that and I told her 15 years, yada, yada. Anyway, long story short, she asked if I was able to take on more work and I said sure. She asked me to leave a business card with her and she would have the OM call me. I left a card and a couple days later sent a followup letter basically thanking her for her time and her wonderful bed side manner and then included another card with the letter with a little friendly and if you ever need any help with your transcription, remember to give me a call...
They did and they are one of my greatest accounts. One other time at an auction at a business school that was going under, my husband (who never meets a stranger) struck up a conversation with this very professional looking woman who was buying up all the good office furniture and equipment. It seemed like she was willing to outbid everybody and so my husband being curious struck of a conversation and found out she was a psychologist opening up a new office and was there to try to get some office supplies. He proceeded to introduce me and tell her that I was a transcriptionist. She asked if I had a card and I did. Gave it to her, wrote down my per line rate on the back with a note that said it was negotiable and to give me call. She did and that is the second account I have.
I mean if you have the personality to sell yourself and go door to door, I say go for it. I'm just one of those stand-offish kind of people that has trouble making the first move, but once the door is opened for me, I'm always prepared.
No, because I've never lost anyone extremely close to
me, huh? You assume so much.
I do know how it feels to lose someone before their time, traumatically, lose my world...so don't come here telling me I don't know anything of what she is feeling! How can you sit here and tell me not to judge and then judge me?
Am I harsh? Probably so, but I have good reason to feel the way I do about her. I know we all make mistakes. I've made plenty myself. That doesn't make me change my mind on some of the things she did. Call it what you want. I don't really care.
I did however say that I feel bad for her. I don't think anyone should have to go through losing a child.
There are ESL specialists in all fields & all over the country. You've just been extremely lucky
s
I've always thought the difficult dictators should be
weighted at the very least to compensate the MT at a higher rate for their effort. I think the cherrypickers, if they are not going to be stopped, should at least get lower pay for their reports.
Of course, if you paid 2 cents more for Dr. ESL's work then you'd have to set a limit to how many blanks could be accepted period or the cherrypickers would do them and leave nothing BUT blanks to get the money.
It would have been better for them to have never tried the "send back to pool" block than to let the complainers overrule and win. Sad.
Oh I know, I've studied legal aspects of med recs, too, been in this a long time. sm
I totally get everything you say, and I don't argue with any of it.
But I work for a national that has had the same errors in the same normals for YEARS, so we're talking probably thousands of charts by now. I can't fix years of apathy. If I was in charge, you betcha I would.
The doctor's name is what's on the document, it still comes down to him/her.
A lot of legal transcription and legal jobs in
 xx
PROOFREAD PROOFREAD PROOFREAD
PROOFREAD PROOFREAD PROOFREAD PROOFREAD
Yes,,, and that is why you also proofread. nm
:P
How do you proofread? sm
What is the fastest, most accurate way you proofread? I have been playing back my reports from the beginning of it on fast chipmunk sounding speed. I catch myself making exapander errors a lot. I
absolutely have to proofread as I usually catch at least 2 per report before I send them. Trying to proofread 'as I go' does not work for me as I still find mistakes when I am done. What is the Fastest way of doing this? Does anyone have any advice? Thank you muchos.
I proofread as I go
The only time I go back to listen again is if I have a blank, or sometimes with a difficult ESL I will go back and listen for a second time, but 99% of the time I proof as I go.
proofread?
I don't proofread - that is QA job. How do you think I could edit over 650 lines an hour? It's not by double-checking my own fine self.
It is probably better to proofread as you go
as that can be a careless way to proof. Starting a new account can be overwhelming and cause you to make careless errors. I would say proof new accounts, but once familiar, then proof as you type. Put frequently made statements in auto correct or use an expander. If the client requires QA, then it is QA's job to catch the errors of the entire document, not just blanks, otherwise, they are getting paid to simply say your work has been QA'd. I think QA is a waste of time myself other than for a second-listen at blanks, and in my case, I have enough experience to have even corrected QA on many of occasions with a reply from QA stating, so sorry my mistake. No one is perfect, but you should not send blatent errors to QA and expect them to correct them. In most cases, they will not. QA is simply a way for a company to pay you less as a typist and you think you are getting something for it in the way of them providing you a second look/listen, which is not true.
why I proofread
sometimes my expansions get away from me. I just typed that patient -- had abdominal discomfort for the last menstrual period. Made sense until I remembered it was a male patient!
They should still be able to proofread and/or
x
Here's a term for you to proofread:
Look that one up!
LOL
Maybe I should clarify, that I would definitely proofread everything if... SM
it was a new account or I had just started a new job. I'll be honest though, I have started jobs with services where while I'm in training, I take my time, proofread everything because I know that I'm being scrutinized. When released from training, I stopped re-reading everything.
I also have never been afraid to argue with QA if I didn't agree. That didn't make me popular for sure and probably my work was scrutinized even closer because they wanted to catch me in a mistake, but they also knew that if they counted me off for something, they had better be 100% right.
I'm not arrogant, just good at what I do and confident. I take pride in my work and I've been doing this for a long time. I just think some QA people need to consider each MT and mistake individually. If you've got an experienced MT who is good and productive and she makes a few minor mistakes from time to time, let it go. Maybe mention it to her in a friendly email, but don't fail her on QA for a period or hyphen or a typo.
That's all I'm saying.
Sorry, but we disagree. I proofread as I go. sm
The places I work for expect things to be ready to go directly to the client. I guess if that works for you and you feel good about yourself, more power to you, but not for me. I don't consider proofing your work to be sitting and re-reading the entire report before you send it -- that's nonsense -- but to think you don't have to look at what you are doing and just let some QA "correction fairy" be your safety net is not professional. I take pride in turning out a quality product and I still manage to provide the quantity too -- there are those of who do BOTH, you know.
"dictated but not proofread"... nm
x
It would be nice if they would have proofread it first...sm
Notify "American's".... this is not possessive, people, it is plural, Americans.
I don't proofread on this board. sm
Wouldn't do any good anyway folks would still complain. Sounds like you are one of them that just want to rip me apart for telling the truth. Plenty of other MTs that hold the same opinons I do about this profession.
If that's all you can pick at me apart is a typo in a paragraph that's a good thing!
You are being too hard on yourself. Proofread after you transcribe to the best of your
ability. If errors are returned to you, then keep a notebook with the mistakes you are making. Refer to your notebook before you begin transcribing. Before you know it, the errors will be less. On the othe hand, if you keep making the same mistakes over and over again, even after keeping notes and reviewing, then you probably really do not like this type of work. Not everyone is cut out for it. It sounds like when you were in-house, you did not transcribe full-time but had varied work duties. I would try the notbook and see how what goes first.
After 18 yrs, I proofread as I go.. Nobody should sit and reread every word when on production.
x
Can't assume samples are correct! Always proofread everything. nm
s
I may even be able to proofread and catch spelling errors (interruptions)!
I find that by rewinding and relistening to the dictation as I proofread...sm
I will find a few little things I missed that I wouldn't catch just by proofing because it actually made sense but I might have missed something.
Actually it's years to ears. I can spell just fine, just don't take the time to proofread eve
post as I'm busy transcribing at the same time. Sorry to say my priorities are such that you guys here don't rank perfect posts. Now, if you guys want to pay per post.... 
I hope you proofread your reports closer than you proofed this post
No offense, but it kinda makes me cringe. And, no, I'm not the OP. I just had to read your post a couple of times to comprehend it through all of the typos.
PC to MAC documents?
How would I send a PC file that can be read on a MAC and vice versa? Please help ASAP.
you proofread all business letters you receive in the mail and have fits over the errors! LOL (nm)
The MDs are the one signing the documents and
attesting to their accurateness. Not the MTs.
New documents on QNet for MQ MTs
Go to QNet; look under Policy & Governance; click on Human Resources in the window to the right there are two new documents --- MTME Benefit Policy.
It's all apparently still in the workings but they are starting to post documents as they are readied.
Just thought I would share.
You must compare your documents..
with MS-Word Word Count, which is the standard. MS-Word count tool is used by FlashCount.
In case of any problem, feel free to ask.
Webmaster@MTStars.com
Compare old documents
Look at some of your old documents and see what your gross line is and then see what they would have been paid if you had been using a 65 cpl. In word you can do that. Now some software will count double character for capitalization, bold, underline, tabs are counted, indent and count spaces. So that will also make a difference. When one of my accounts was using Sylcount we always counted that way. I do not think that there is a simple chart to use and since your documents could be very personalized with formatting, i.e. indenting lines which makes a gross line smaller, to me it would be best to compare your specific documents rather than a generic table. There are a lot of variables (how long is your gross line) and I don't think a comparison table could take that all into account. But I would think I think an estimation has always been 30% less lines for cpl versus gross.
Help please - all my documents disappeared. sm
Has anyone ever had anything like this happen? Everything that I had stored in my documents folder disappeared. Any settings that I had specific to my computer are gone like including my favorites on IE, my normal.dot with all my macros, autocorrect entries, etc. for word, all music files, all pictures, and any and all word and excel based documents I had saved. Interestingly my daughters user ID is fine and none of her documents disappeared. I have ran virus scanners to know avail so I don't know if it was some sort of virus or hardware failure. Any ideas? It is a pain to start all over. Also, what does everyone use for backup? This is about the third time this year I have had computer issues and lost everything and I am so TIRED of starting over and kicking my production time in half until I get myself built back up. I am ready for some type of really awesome backup to assure this does not happen to me again.
Bringing up old documents....
Hi-I have only worked on Extext for a few days and it seems pretty good. I agree with the problem with inserting doctors names though. I am especially interested in finding out how to pull up old documents as I wasn't told about this feature. Can you let me know? Thanks....
Maybe she means that the VR documents
are 'prescreened' for 'quality scare' before getting downloaded to the MT? If there are too many errors, it gets deleted and downloaded blank on the MT's screens?
But this does not make muchsense, does it?
Or maybe if QA finds too many mistakes, it gets deleted and sent back to the MT for straight transcription?
Don't know.
MPWord and assembling the documents into one
Hi,
MPWord does require you do a separate file for each dictation, but it takes the drudgery out of this, for it automatically saves/names the files for you.
It also has a feature that allows you to put all those notes into one file at the end of the day. If you don't need to preserve headers/footers use the Sticky Notes (Append). If you do need to preserve headers/footers, use PDF (Assemble). With either function, you can send your client one file with the day's work.
vJoe
Has anyone had trouble converting documents
Word 2000. These seem to be putting a .doc extension after all of my documents now. Anyone have a fix? I have an account that I can't use the .doc extension, and when I back that extension off, I get a message saying "this document may not be usable". Is this a Vista issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 in advance for any help in this OMG matter! I'm about ready to  , and I have just gotten it to grow to a length that I like.
Searching in WP 5.1 documents through Windows XP
 I have changed word processing programs from DOS-based to Windows-based programs, but still need to access the old WP 5.1 documents. I am having trouble searching the documents through Windows, i.e., searching for a person's name, etc. inside the document. Do you have any suggestions? 
What file extension do this WP5.1 documents have?
If they're not saved as .doc, Word won't be able to search them; however, you can open them individually with Word.
My Documents is a folder, not a program.
x
Are documents set to print getting hung up
.
Are we talking Word documents or...
are you typing directly into Meditech or Cerner or a system like that?
You have dragon scan your documents and -
it picks up words it does not know and has you train them, and it also recognizes words that you use more than others.
If I recall, you should be able to pull up all the supporting documents sm
to review, not just the summary page. I always back it up by doing the old pencil, paper, calculator method just to be sure.
It's your responsibility to give them their documents on disk/CD!
nm
Thanks to you all!!! Mine was under Documents&Settings, then Home. :)
xxx
Pull up some documents and count them out each way to compare. nm
s
When bringing up old documents in Extext, Ctrl S,
I think I missed a step. I hit ctrl S, put in patient's name (in this case) and then click find, or quick find. Then, it brings up a list of the patient's admission. Then, what do I hit to bring up the document? The options on the right side are statistics and close? I tried to highlight and double click the admission but nothing. Need some help here....Thanks
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