Need fast skills update
Posted By: Frizzing on 2005-12-29
In Reply to:
Need books/tapes to upgrade skills to do acute care work. Any advice on materials I can purchase. Going back to school is not an option right now.
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Would state you are a fast learner with good computer skills
and able to pick up things quickly once you are shown. Good luck!!
Update..bought computer today and Dell and found out it couldnt get here as fast as I needed it so I
Got the same computer for like $400 less and they'll ship it out tomorrow. Should be here in 4 days..Same everything including warranty. Try Ebay.!!!
Prob is then you may get all fast fast fast talkers...not a fair way nm
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You need to Ctrl + A, then hit F9 to update all fields. To update header,
you need to switch to print preview and back or print the document.
depends how fast the MT is......No one would want to pay me by the hour because I'm fast.
nm
how fast you can type, has little to do with how fast you can transcribe
Let's face it, we can only type as fast as the doctors dictate... worse, we can only type as fast as we can *understand* the doctors. Given someone who slurs or has a heavy accent, someone who clears his throat constantly or shuffles through the paper, given an unfamiliar account or work type, or an area we don't have much experience in and have to look up words, etc., any and all of these things combine to make typing speed not really relative at all. I personally type 110, but not when I'm transcribing. I tell most folks who ask, if you type 65-75 wpm, you're solidly in the ballpark for doing medical transcription.
people skills
I beg to differ. I agree with the OP - your post was rude and condescending. I see no evidence of people skills in anything you wrote or in the "tone" of your post.
Also, your reply had nothing to do with her post. She was sharing good news about a hiring phase going on right now. Too bad you are so miserable that you cannot even recognize when one human being is sharing good news with others.
From what I have seen and experienced with MTSOs in the last 2 years (28 years in this business), there are many owners, managers and supervisors with no clue about how to deal with their employees.
SO, maybe you are the one who needs to find another business.
Looking to upgrade skills, though sm
just for personal reasons, as I'm still working, etc. I see Medword has a 9 specialty CD set for $269, and of course there is the SUM Advanced package but that's $840. My goal is to be more employable by just broadening my skills as I've only been doing ER and clinic for years (going on 10); however, I'm certainly not made of money! ;) Do you think the Medword one would be okay or a waste of money? I've heard great things about the SUM program but do you think it's really necessary?
Thanks for your thoughts!
I hope your MT skills
This is where your skills really come into play.
It will drive you mad if you let it. Sometimes even the doctor is unfamiliar with the med especially specialists. I have found that on an occasional basis. 
$$ should have nothing to do with your skills and conscientiousness. (sm)
you sound like one of the ones who is relatively new to the field (within the last 10 years) who pumps out reports, doesn't spell correctly, and doesn't like being corrected. Am I right?
Gap in spelling skills, too.
I have noted that misspelled words are everywhere; spelling skills are apparently no longer valued (and I'm talking people with advanced degrees with atrocious spelling and grammar). I need to go to the dentist and get some teeth fixed from clenching my jaws so tightly whenever a doctor says things like "he itched himself".
not too sure of skills, need advice
Just wondering if any of you have experienced a lot of "knocks" starting out in transcription. I took an at-home course in 98 and finally got hired in 2000 and trained in office for 8 months. I worked at home for about 3 months then my husband divorced me. I continued to work in the medical field for the next 4 years, doing work in a hospital that included med term and typing with 98% accuracy or actual transcription. My problem is when I find a job my feedback is that I am leaving little words out, or not paying close enought attention to detail. What can I do to improve this? the only thing I can think of is just keep practicing but I can't keep an actual transcripton job long enough! What do I do? 
Looking to strengthen skills...
I have been in the field for 7 years with the same account (IM and Family Practice.) Looking to strengthen my skills. The areas I feel I need improvement in are grammer, proofing (something I have done very little of), and a stronger understanding of terminology. If you have any advice on where to go from here. I do not need a full transcription course, but does anyone offer a "refresher" and/or practice dictation in different specialties. Thanks so much!!
What if you were an LPN with not so hot typing skills?
Would that duty still be required of you? Sounds like you are not that busy as an LPN. Small office? This was not in your original job description? I would ask about a pay increase along with the duty increase.
thanks...just knowing there are others, same age bracket, skills, etc...does help...
like you, I LOVE this job, and actually chose it - not the other way around. Fortunately, it has not cost me anything, really, like the other poster mentioned; but I too am scared.
It is always upsetting when you life changes because of things out of your control...at our age, we are from the times when people had one job until they retired. I know that is history, but man, this way is ridiculous. Flying from job to job, no continuity, no structure. What good can come of this anyway.
like the other poster mentioned, who cares about us anyway, really. the rich only care about getting richer, and that crap about giving the tax cuts to the rich and they will 'share it' - what a bunch of fools we have been.
thanks for sharing!
Advice on expanding my skills..
If I want to specialize in Orthopedic or Cardiology or some other specialty, what is the best way to do this? I currently only do ER.
Would I have to enroll in an on-line school or can I just use practice tapes?
Any advice is appreciated!!
Test your typing skills
http://www.arcadespot.net/play-1126.html
If your DD has previous skills she can post
resume on the on-line sites like monster.com. There are few jobs that are legit. If they require $$ upfront you can bet they are a scam.
A board to discuss how MT skills can
be transitioned into another line of work couldn't hurt. No matter how secure any job or profession appears to be, the situation can change at any time. That is the reality of the workplace with mergers, technology, etc.
One of the the worst career management errors is to become complacent. I can look back on seventeen years in this profession. It has changed, and not to our advantage. I can't predict the future, but it would be naive not to at least consider other options.
Just good parenting skills -nm
m
If you are confident of your skills, testing
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The people who hate QA are the ones with bad skills and cannot type for nothing!
Maybe these people should learn how to bring their scores up instead of thinking their mistakes are right!
Maybe if you spend more time honing your skills and
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She fears because of her own lack of transcription skills, sm
not because the ESL doctors do not give good patient care. If you are not up to the job of transcribing the reports, then you should not try to do it. But do not blame poor patient care on the ESL doctors.
Good research skills the best skill an MT
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Your account is too easy for your skills would be my thought.
For instance, you are making very good money easily while other MTs may be on a more difficult account and making less. You may one day be looked at as a person to move into another more challenging account to keep you in the curve of pay for MTs. That would be fair, actually, when you think about it.
failed skills test for national sm
Hi all. I have been an MT for 10 years and took a skills test for a national and FAILED.
Oh my goodness, talk about a slap in the face! All I know is they require 90% accuracy and apparently I failed that.
It has me questioning my skills at this point. PLEASE tell me others of you have had this problem!
Thanks
low level, low income, low education, low coping skills.
birds of a feather flock together FOR THE MOST PART. why don't rich people move to trailer parks? the mentality. why do low income people stay low income? no education. why no education? no forward thinking as to why some people can make money and others don't. sorry if you don't like it, but stats don't lie. do a google search. there are certain neighborhoods that have income levels, education levels, crime rates. these low income housing units, trailer park, section 8, apartments that do not require credit checks have higher crime rates, lower education levels and lower incomes. google will answer all your questions regarding stats. why do you think some neighborhoods are more valuable than others? where i live the same house could be in one neighborhood and be more valuable than a house sitting in another neighborhood that is zoned for trailer parks. why is that? go figure.
Absolutely! Wonderful hobby and your skills will only improve.
I started knitting, quit for a year when I got discouraged because I couldn't fix my mistakes easily, then went back, determined to learn the craft. For me, what was wonderful was when I automatically could recognize what was right and wrong, and fix it easily. Now, I have more yarn than I could ever use, and more projects started than I'll ever finish. It's a lifetime hobby. There'll never be enough yarn.
I started MT to gain skills to eventually work....sm
outside my home. I was working another small business from home too and had been home for 13 years total. My MT skills got me a job as a secretary for the Army. My first position didn't pay a lot, but it was still about $3.50 more an hour than I could find anywhere else locally. In August 2006, with promotions etc., I will have had total increases in salary of 45% in two years. My next move is to start taking some college courses (which my employer will pay for) and applying for positions with a more defined career field. Having a hard time figuring out which field, as I have a lot of options/opportunity.
Working from home served a huge purpose, but since DH is also self-employed, my current job adds a lot of security to our family in terms of health/life insurance, retirement, paid vacations, etc. I added up the cost of all my paid benefits vs. paying out of pocket as an independent contractor, and they were worth another 35 - 40% of my salary, which will increase once I start taking college classes.
If you are not looking in the medical field, gear your resume towards your other skills. MTs have a myriad of skills (research, computer, organizational, listening, following instructions, bookkeeping). If you are an independent contractor, you are more than an MT, you are a small business owner, which puts a host of additional skills on your plate. Get creative and look at some on-line resumes in different fields, you will probably be surprised how many skills you have.
When I decided to look for a job, I researched all the highest paying companies/opportunities within the distance I was willing to travel and only applied to those companies. It took about a year and a few interviews, but I eventually got exactly what I was looking for. I still get calls from some of the places I interviewed/applied offering jobs.
I think one reason MTs find it hard to have diverse skills (s/m)
is that for all these years we have been pigeonholed into just one specialty - typing medical reports. When I started MT at my organization, we had a variety of duties. Now we just sit and type. Interestingly, the few who got promotions within or out of the MT department were the ones who weren't too smart, and not very good MTs. The good MTs were kept where they were needed - doing transcription work only. And the smart ones are considered a threat to management, so they have no hope of ever advancing.
I've been to night school to try to broaden my computer skills, and the community college system is totally not on the cutting edge. Everytime I learned something useful, it became obsolete before we could ever implment it in our workplace.
I've looked into changing fields, and one of the big stumbling blocks is all the prerequisites for just about any field of study. Many of them involve the math & science classes I was steered away from due to my gender. (This was the 60s, remember... it was still legal to discriminate back then.) I looked into training as a veterinary technician, and working full-time and going to night school, getting all the classes in that I missed in high school was going to eat up about 4-5 years. It would probably take even longer to get into the vet-tech program. By the time I graduated, I would probably be in my early 70's. What veterinary hospital is going to want to hire a 70 year old newbie who will either retire or die before she's even learned the ropes at the new job?
Meanwhile, what ticks me off is that MT's are expected to have a very broad knowledge of English, medical terminology and computers, and be whiz-bang typists as well. And yet the same people that want speed, accuracy and experience, don't want to pay squat for it.
With your people skills, you'll stay unemployed. nm
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Dictators/Docs should be rated on their dictation skills!
I get so tired of hearing how hard everyone thinks it's up to the MT to keep trying to decipher poor dictation--that the CMT credential would actually help with that! I have a feeling most MTs probably wouldn't do better/worse if the had the CMT credential. I'm convinced most of us do just fine without a CMT credential if you could just understand many of the darned docs with their poor dictation techniques. How about if they were rated based on their dictation competency! Would it help if we could classify the ones that dictate with speeds like a runaway train, their poor sentence structure, ESL language incompetencies, slurring, mumbling, chewing, etc., so even a marginally competent MT could get the a document transcribed. That's where they should put the onus of responsibility for getting better quality work. My thoughts.
Sounds like a great way to use the skills you already have, but you have a real career with a future
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Valuable post, thanks. MT plus Skills Upgrade minus Complaining = Dollars. NM
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Yeah, we have no skills or intelligence whatsoever. We just fill in blanks! Geez! A monkey can le
Is that all you do, type? It's not all I do either. I have to know what I'm talking about, apparently you don't because you can just leave blanks!
Update to above
I found the link to above. Here it is:
https://volunteer.ccrf.hhs.gov/
Thanks for the update! NM
NM
Thanks and update
Hi Pat and everyone who posted a reply..
I really appreciate your imput on this and am becoming wary of the whole thing. I emailed the person who is giving me this test and she said that the only format she has the files is .wav. She recommended Express Scribe but it doesn't seem to help me much quality wise. One thing I thought about doing was converting the .wav files to MP3's. That might make it clearer. I have a converter here on the computer and when I previewed the files as MP3's they were much clearer with less "noise" in the background". (less static sound) Of course I don't know if I want to convert files every day just for clarity sake. I'd sure like to hear from anyone else who has ideas on how to deal with sound files. Thank you to all who wrote me about this!
Best,
RT
Update
This morning I was very upset. I had just had an argument with my daughter's father. I was crying. I tried to call several people to talk to them and no one was answering. My main concern was my daughter was there and I didn't want her to see me this way. My breathing turned very rapid/hyperventilating. This has only happened once before, right after an earthquake about 15 years ago. I didn't really have any other symptoms and I slowly caught my breath and started breathing normally after about 10 minutes.
Someone came and took my daughter who was worried about me, but not crying. I reassured her that I loved her and I'd be okay.
Afterwards, I contemplated about going to doctor, but felt fine afterwards, just a little lightheaded. I called a counseling center, told them what happened and got an appointment to go in and talk with them. It helped somewhat and I came home.
Now, I feel lightheaded still and my throat is dry, but otherwise I am okay. I did just start working out, but I am pretty sure this was only panic/stress related and not anything else. If I still feel bad tomorrow, I will go. But considering no insurance, I'd rather not.
I'm trying to make a few changes to my life, as with working at home, I feel pretty alone and I think the fact that I couldn't get a hold of anyone made it worse. A lot of people depend on me and yet sometimes I feel like I get forgotten when it comes to depending on people. This weekend, I have made the effort to do more things out of the house and I really enjoyed myself. Partly may be holiday blues too as I'm single. And also I have this aggression towards my ex. He only keeps my daughter 8 hours a week and one of the tensions we were arguing about.
I'm not one to ask for help, but because of the panic attack today and that it happened in front of my daughter, I was more than willing to ask for help. Online help or advice is also appreciated.
Update
The surgeon was very pleased with the surgery. He feels that he got about 95% of the tumor (which was difficult to get as this type tends to branch out). She is able to move all of her extremities. We'll know more once the final path is back. If all goes well, she may get to come home early next week and will be starting chemo soon. Once again, I want to thank you all for your prayers and support.
thanks for update!
I was worried I missed a lot--I think I got most of it then. Can't wait until next week!
Update.
He came home and apologized and said he will stop playing so much. He hasn't got on this evening either. I am glad he is willing to work it out now. I guess I will see. I am not going to be too hard on him. I don't mind if he plays the game, just as long as he cuts down. I guess I will find out with time. Thanks to the people who gave me advice. I didn't appreciate the name calling and some comments some people made about me, but I guess you have to expect the trolls to start coming out as night time approaches, lol.
Update??
So, were you pregnant or not?
UPDATE
I started my period.
Thanks to everyone who replied to me, it did give me hope. I am going to keep on trying, even though I feel like giving up.
I better get back to work. All this worrying has given me low line counts the past few days.
Thanks!!
Had to update this one
I went to the FCC website and filed a complaint. They can be fined up to $3000 for the first phone call for not providing the information required by the TCPA act. If we all start reporting all of the violations, maybe we can just get them fined into bankruptcy. Actually, not only can the company placing the call be fined, the company they are calling on behalf of can be fined as well - up to $500 per violation each. If the American companies start getting enough fines from using the offshore companies, they may think twice about using them.
Update
Please remind Dad that this is a secretive illness and if she's really sick, she'll learn even more deceptive tricks like laxatives, holding food for long enough to appease you, then vomiting, etc. Be hypervigilent because she'll have him thinking she's all better. I'd even tell any of her very close friends (who may have encouraged this) that you're aware of her problem. She may seem to have accepted what you said, but I guarantee she's thinking up ways to get around you. Much luck to you.
UPDATE!!
Well, I took my son to the doctor this morning. Needless to say they were dumbfounded by the so-called "treatment" my ex did to my son.
He has the equivalent of a third-degree burn on the great toe of his right foot. They applied Silvadene cream and wrapped it in gauze. I have to apply more cream and change the dressing three times a day. We have to be very diligent in this as a foot infection could completely ruin the rest of his summer.
They also prescribed Keflex for him to also try to help prevent infection. He cannot go swimming unless it's in a swimming pool. I take him back to the doctor in one week for a recheck. They will address the warts at a later time because his foot has to heal before they can do anything else to them. I'm not really all that concerned about the warts at this point. They will be taken care of in time.
My son's doctor assured me that they will cooperate with my attorney in any way necessary if further actions need to be taken. They did not feel it was necessary on their part to contact child services or any other authorities. But they will cooperate.
Thankfully, my son isn't in any pain at this time, but that is because the nerves have been burned. The doctor informed me that it would not be out of the ordinary for it to start bothering him and/or causing pain once it really starts to heal.
Thank you to all of you who responded with your kind words and advice. It meant a lot to me as I was very upset (I'm sure anyone would be).
Update sm
I talked to my realtor this morning. She finally talked to the seller's agent. They said when they were out of town a toilet overflowed. They said they have receipts to show this has been fixed. She's trying to find some cheaper insurance for us. She said the sellers are paying $800 a year premium. The premium I was quoted was $1120 a year.
I told her I still don't feel comfortable doing this. I know she wants the deal to go through so that she can get paid, but that's not my problem. I don't think she's looking out for our best interests.
What do you think?
IP7 Update
I updated last weekend and used it for a week. I did not like it at all. It has a completely different look and where things are as far as tool buttons, etc., just doesn't work for me, so I unstalled it and went back to IE6. I must say that the install and uninstall went smoothly. If you're not comfortable with the installing just yet, take a look at the preview site. That might give you an idea of whether you will like it or not. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx#ie7interface
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