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I would agree they are slow and frustrating

Posted By: to learn on 2008-04-21
In Reply to: I have 15 years experience, mostly - tired in OH

but once you have them down you can make great line counts on them.

As a side note, I have been doing ops daily for 10 years and I still use my Stedman Medical and Surgical Equipment word book often. If you are going to dive into ops you must, must, must get this book before starting. It will help you a lot.


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I agree; I love MDI-FL. I am a slow right now too, but
this is a really slow week. I am happy because I worked a ton of hours all year. My only problem with them was "too much work!!"
I agree that these docs need to slow down sm
but the reality of it is, they never will! They dictate how they dictate and we are not going to change that.

I can remember when I first started. This particular hospital took folks and taught them MT. Folks who had absolutely no experience. I was 22 years old and anxious to learn this profession that I knew absolutely nothing about. I remember after about the second week telling the person who was training me that we should have a "seminar" and teach these docs how to dictate! Looking back on that it cracks me up. That was youth and inexperience speaking.

Again, it does bother me that these folks speak so fast sometimes and the accents sometimes are horrible. The accents can be a problem in other areas of medicine too. If a person cannot be understood that is a dangerous mix.

Bottom line is, we cannot change them, so we have to learn all that we can. It is unfortunate that we don't get the recognition or the pay that we all deserve. Most folks think we are just "typists" and that anyone can do this. Every MT has to come to grips with the fact that folks do not understand what we do and we don't get the recognition that we deserve. My satisfaction comes in turning out a quality report and always remembering that there is a "patient" behind all of this and a quality report contributes to quality care! It is not just a matter of production and how many lines typed. Many MTs have fallen into that trap and have forgotten the real reason we do this.
It may die a slow death. Agree with having more than one
nm
I agree - slow death
I don't think it's on its way out just yet, but the type of work is changing and with VR and EMR, who knows how long we will be typing. I do agree, also, ongoing for coding. I think the more diverse you make yourself, the better off you will be. Never put all your eggs in one basket. Good luck!
I agree demographic info and extras slow you down
I work on an account where there is no interface and every Phy. name has to be looked up in an excel spreadsheet and inserted, name and ID# for cc phys. ect. Not to mention all the pt. information. This takes up a lot of time and most of the reports are 2 or 3 minutes, some even a little over a minute...makes for a long day
Slow day for me. Typed two reports in two hours. Anyone else having unusually slow day?
dd
That must be so frustrating! sm

I've only purchased brand new units (around $200), but they only last a year or a little more for me.  I think they make the darned machines with too many plastic parts and they just don't last.


I don't think I'd trust buying a used one without some sort of guarantee.


Sorry - hope things get better!


very frustrating
I was not aware that the MQ levels were based on number of lines typed. The email I got differentiated the levels by work types.
its frustrating but all you can do is
report it to your mgmt. they have the power to stop it if they want to.
How frustrating is this?
   I have a NP who is dictating.  She calls the patient by his first name, calls him by his first part of hyphenated last name, calls him the last name of the hyphenated last name (i.e.  Mr. John Smith-Jones is sometimes John, somes Mr. Smith, sometimes Mr. Jones).  What a BIG pain for this verbatim account.  "uj" usually gives me the patient's name, now I can't use that because she keeps changing her mind what she wants to call him..................grrrrr.
it is frustrating
It's a little easier for me now because the kids are older, but what I try to do is get up early before everyone else and get a good 2-3 hours in. This works for me because I'm a morning person. If you're not, maybe you could work at night? I know it is tough - you just have to shut yourself in, close the door and become unavailable to the rest of the world !
I can see where it would be frustrating...

I am an MT who also takes frequent breaks to rest my hands and my back.  My daily production is pretty good, but my production per hour would not really impress anyone.


Perhaps you could suggest modifying the report to contain just daily production.  I do not see where productivity per hour or some of those other items are pertinent to anyone else because there are people who will shoot out anything to get a line count and there are those who are gifted at typing 100 wpm, neither of which I can/will do.


It is frustrating for sure...sm
I used to work in-house with a lady that was a cherrypicker. There was one hard dictator that she said "I can't do his and it takes me too much time." Well, it took the rest of us a lot of time and frustration also to do his, but we did it. She was allowed to get away with it because she was good friends with the supervisor. Needless to say, all the other MTs left (except her) and they couldn't find anyone to work there and stay, so now their transcription is sent out to be done. The cherrypicker is stuck there doing whatever anyone hands her to do now. Serves her right!
very frustrating.
I actually just put medical transcription in the search box and came up with 4 pages of videos all foreign. Yikes.
Oh that would be frustrating.

It's not just you. The job is especially frustrating
when the dictations are horrible. Let's see, today I've got speedy spit chick, the um um um um um um um um um um um chick, the old guy with gas who constantly loses his train of thought, and the two foreigners.
How frustrating
and sad. OT, but I would have loved the opportunity to get out of the Northeast cold!
It's very frustrating trying to access
This qualifies for the Stupid Business Decisions award.
It is very frustrating when your pay is determined

by your output and you can't produce with the dictators.  It does get easier and I can do them fairly well know, but I do some really, really bad ones - heavy accents, mumblers, can't pronounce words, etc. and even though I can get through them without any blanks it is VERY frustrating, especially when you have several of them at a time. 


Some of the dictators I have now I can fly through, but the first time I had them I was ready to quit because I left lots of blanks and I just don't leave blanks.  I can't believe I ever thought they were hard because they are so easy now.  You have to train your ears.  Give yourself a couple of weeks and if it doesn't get better ask for another account or start looking.  Every company is going to have some bad dictators, ESL or otherwise, but doing 10% and doing 90% is a big difference.


Good luck - hope it gets better.


It was very frustrating to learn but

after 3 months, I have grown to like it.... well maybe I have grown not to dislike it so much.  I would still rather work in MS Word.  It is NOT the best platform out there to be certain.  The spell check is awful and I copy everything into a Word document to double check.  You cannot copy back into Emdat though.  If there are any changes to make you must type them.  For some reason if you copy from Word, although it looks okay to you, on the physician's end it is wrong.


It is nice not to have to worry about the line count.  It is VERY nice not to have to save each patient separately.  It is nice to have the patients name available (although that is not always the case).  Overall, I give it a C. 


Hope this helped.


The same things happens to me...so frustrating

I have to manually right click and delete all of the extra smart lines.  I've had it to where I have so many smart lines that I only have a couple of inches at the top of my screen to type in.  It happens more some times than others.  It happens whether I'm working in straight Word or ExText Word. I find that if I log out of Word and back in, I can get it to stop happening for awhile, but that is so time consuming, especially if I'm logged in to ExText.  I've looked on all of the boards for a solution but haven't found one yet.   


Yes, it gets so frustrating when trying to work
and having to shut down because of a storm. I recently started with a new company and had to explain the quirky weather around here so they wouldn't think I was just slacking off...lol. But, they are very understanding about it, but it drives me nuts!
This happened to me too - it was SO frustrating! SM
I found that I had a lot of Spyware on my computer that was bogging everything down, and that was causing my ShortHand to work VERY slowly. So when I typed out my abbreviations, it would print out the abbreviation followed a couple of beats later by the whole phrase, know what I mean? It was a huge problem. I ran Spybot (free) and it fixed the problem, but not before my production was drastically decreased and I ended up having to give up one account because the majority of the phrases I used on it were in my shorthand and I just couldn't keep up. Good luck, and I hope this helps!
Frustrating on both sides
You are absolutely correct about the hyphens - if the linked words form an adjective followed by a noun, they are hyphenated.  I know it's frustrating to have undereducated QA people, and as a QA person, it's equally frustrating to have people who absolutely never hyphenate, put a comma after every 2 words (or none at all), etc.  I really really hate when MTs start a sentence with "patient comes in......" when the doctor clearly states "THE patient....".....that drives me insane! I had a report the other night where I had to add "the" 27 times!  It's amazing how many people do not understand proper punctuation usage, adjectives, verbs, etc.  I certainly wish I had more like you who know where they go!
Truly Depressing!!! Frustrating!!!
I know I have posted before....thanks to all those that have given me leads.....but I am so depressed....have applied at too numerous-to-count companies....and STILL no MT job!!!!! Have some medical background besides my MT diploma, yet cannot get anywhere!!!! Even bought a foot pedal.....how is one supposed to get experience if no one will mentor them....and I have applied to all mentoring openings.....but no responses!!!! I JUST WANT TO CRY!!!! Seriously thinkiing that this was a big mistake.....wanted to further my career....but this hasn't helped!!!!  And unfortunately, I cannot afford to take another MT course......sorry to post again....I just needed to vent.....so miserable!!!!    Sneaser
Yes I tried it many times. This is so frustrating. nm
:
Yes, it is frustrating when trying to converse with people
who don't understand English.
Oh golly, that must be frustrating and annoying.
maybe you can make a game for yourself of second-guessing the QA folks. It sounds like they are the kind of ill-informed people who would rather cling to their ignorance like grim death than open their minds and learn something useful. If you look at figuring out their foibles as a game, maybe it won't rankle so much.
How frustrating! Maybe you could offer to charge them half price, but
I would not let them get away with taking advantage of you. I know you need the job, but it's not fair for them to expect you to spend all that time (especially over a holiday weekend) and effort for nothing. Offering to only charge them half price at least gives you something for your time and also offers them a break. It was their mistake - not yours but halfing it with them will hopefully show them that they are willing to work with them on it but also let them know you're not a push-over that they can take advantage of.

Good luck!
Agree, agree, agree! Just listen to Benny Hinn..

he speaks perfect English, especially when asking for money!  Also, in my opinion, blanks should be left in the doc's dictation if not able to be transcribed, maybe then they will know that are NOT understood.  With QA fixing them, what need is there for them to care if we understand them or not? 


To slow down....
#4 with decrease speed.  When you are ready to go back to "normal" speed just press #5  or to reset speed do a **  Good luck with that report!!!
too slow

I wish I was fast enough to be able to meet my line count and relax a little. Maybe in another year or so.


Slow for me too!
Both compaines I work for have no work--- no work = no money!
Slow day?
Wish it was - I'm swamped with residents! ARGH
Slow day - I wish!
I keep getting work from other offices dumped on me, but how am I supposed to do my regular work and work for another office when the computer guy can't even keep our computers working??? Today the problem was with the cable - HELLO - OUR SYSTEM WON'T LET US WORK OFF-LINE!
very, very slow? ... nm
x
Never had a slow day, but sure could use one.
 
Yes, it seems to slow me down (sm)
Except, of course, when I'm having a bad day with really diffult dictators. For the most part though, I can be rushing like a crazy person and then sit down to transcribe and it just eases me into a different frame of mind. My mind goes all sorts of places thinking of everything else I need to do, etc. Not in a stressful way though. It is more like when I am transcribing my brain is in a different "realm" and able to work out other stuff and come up with sometimes the onliest things. Seem to do much of my brainstorming while transcribing, whether I intend to or not. Seems easier to plan dinner, etc. Weird.
Is it slow or is it just me?
I have not had a full day of transcribing in weeks!  I'm getting a bit worried.  I know it's probably slow because of vacations, etc. but enough already!  Anyone else out of work? 
Slow with this doc

I have had this doc for a while now, but I am so slow with him. I noticed that I have to stop the dictation at least once every sentence, sometimes more, and it just took me ten minutes to do a 2:50 dictation.


He talkes very fast and quiet but other than that he is great. Although he talks fast, he is pretty clear and I rarely have to look things up with him, other than to CC at the end of the dictation which is almost every report.


I do not have this problem with any of my other docs, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions? I have his favorite sayings in my expander, but just cannot seem to get faster at his reports. Thanks! 


PT I do 500-800 a day; I am slow though - sm
avg. 140-165 lines an hour; sometimes less, depends on the degree of difficulty and if ESL, but make a min. of $12 an hour up to $16 so I am happy enough.
How slow is slow.
What's your connection speed now?
I am not slow and ive done everything
from MT to Quality Assurance to supervisor. I have seen many a platform in my time. There are some really crappy ones out there that steal from the MTs, in particular Dictaphones managed Ichart service. Heres what they say --- As part of our ichart service, Dictaphone can help you assess the "true" cost of your current transcription infrastructure - Inadequate Billing Detail.
No true MT line counting standards for billing.
Challenging Audit Trail and Process.
"Special Characters" Can Inflate Line Counts By 15%.
"Invisible Characters" Can Inflate Line Counts Up To 20-40%!
Poorly Designed Templates can lead to Excessive Line Counts.
Multi-page Reports can Drive Excessive Characters and/or hidden words. If thats not trying to control line counts I don't know what is.
seriously, is that what causes everything to go slow?
I have often figured that I was getting the rejects of others - my account has mostly pretty good dictators but some weeks I never get the good ones, repeatedly get horrible dictators, long reports with huge spaces - yesterday it was moving so slow I thought it was going to crash.
It's #4 for me to slow it down (nm)
nm
Slow IT
Try going into the tools area. There is a button somewhere that is called some sort of optimizer. See if that works. Also, uncheck the continuations box. Good luck.
too slow
from what it shows on the website you posted, it would be too slow --- the processor is less than 3.0 and the hard drive is only 5400, you need a 7200 rpm --

And there is no mention of a serial port -- which you will quite often need for you foot pedal.

My opinion -- Too much money for too little return -- keep looking
WAY SLOW.

Nothing slow here, they just want sm
you to think that, and I have no idea why. We are swamped, in over time for the last three weeks.
Slow???
Is anyone else finding it to be really slow lately?  I have had very little work since shortly after Thanksgiving. 
Slow going sm

Rhode Island, the smallest state, was bumper to bumper, took 4+ hours for a normal 30 minute commute Some ran out of gas and had to abandon their vehicles. Tempers flared and school kids didn't get home on buses for hours, no snacks, bathroom breaks, etc., it was very poorly prepared for, although there was plenty of warning. If I had young children in the house (as I did when younger) I would always make sure they had some kind of energy bar with them if they left for school on a day a storm was forecast (or not send them at all). Girl Scout motto: Be prepared! A clue for me is always the birds. Sounds silly, but if you see the birds flocking, noisier than usual, etc., they are getting ready for a big storm. In the blizzard of '78, I was more prepared than anyone else and I have the birds to thank for that. I saw their frenzy, prepared for a big one and had all my work done in a timely fashion and enough food for a week (which it took to get back to normal.) (Showing my age.) Birds are great predictors of a storm if you watch and listen.