Use your computer downtime for medical research (sm)

First, this is not spam.  I am just a QA who found the below projects.  It is called BOINC, and the purpose is for home users to allow their CPU and memory to be utilized as a "supercomputer" for the purpose of medical and other research projects.  It runs on parameters you set in terms of when it can run, etc.  I have been using it for a week and it does not slow my system down at all.  Why not use that downtime for projects such as AIDS and cancer research?

Here are the links:

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta

You can also Google BOINC to find a list of projects.

• Use your computer downtime for medical research (sm) - NCQA
  • BOINC - not OP
  • I wouldn't trust this at all! I'm shocked you do! - I certainly hope you only use your personal PC.
    • I hope you don't use your - anonny
    • To each their own. It's safe. Thousands of people are using it. - NCQA
      • Says who? The website? lol - Sounds fishy to me. Go ahead, tho.
      • And if thousands of people jumped off bridge, - would you? Oops. Sorry, just channeling mom.
        • No, but the two are hardly comparable. - Lifejackets required

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

Do MTSOs, nationals, usually pay for downtime for employees?  If so, what has been your experience - ever received downtime? your company's policy, i.e., pay for two days downtime?

Also, as an employee for a nat'l, if you have a set schedule, what do you do when very little work comes in, for example one dictation/hour?  At what point do you cut out?  I'm new to working for a national and this has happened a lot lately - I know, the holidays.  If there is little work, I usually only stay connected for two hours, let me sup. know, and call it a day. 

I swear, sometimes I hate this industry!!  Any other company, at least in my state, if there is no work, as an employee, you still get paid or after a certain period, you get unemployment...something!

I was doing some research and just thought I would share it here. 

----------

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Employment-Law-924/2008/3/unpaid-training.htm

Question
I'm a part time security officer.  The contract is changing hands where i work (large corporate facility)...the location stays the same but a new company takes over the new contract next week.  The incoming company has advised everyone that they must attend a mandatory unpaid training class.  Is this legal?

Answer

Expert: Shirley McAllister, CPP, PHR
Date: 3/28/2008
Subject: unpaid training

It is not legal.

Here is the ruling from the Department of Labor Website at

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs22.pdf

Lectures, Meetings and Training Programs: Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time only if four criteria are met, namely: it is outside normal hours, it is voluntary, not job related, and no other work is concurrently performed.

Since the meetings are not voluntary you must be paid to attend them.

FURTHER:

29 CFR 785.27 - General.
Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time if the following four criteria are met:
(a) Attendance is outside of the employee's regular working hours;
(b) Attendance is in fact voluntary;
(c) The course, lecture, or meeting is not directly related to the employee's job; and
(d) The employee does not perform any productive work during such attendance.

IF THE ABOVE 4 CRITERIA ARE NOT MET, THEN THE EMPLOYEE MUST BE PAID FOR THE TRAINING/MEETING TIME.

29 CFR 785.28 - Involuntary attendance.
Attendance is not voluntary, of course, if it is required by the employer. It is not voluntary in fact if the employee is given to understand or led to believe that his present working conditions or the continuance of his employment would be adversely affected by nonattendance.
__________________

ICs and unpaid trainings:

http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59022

----------------

FURTHER
(FROM http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/hoursworked/screen1d.asp)

Waiting for Work
Time which an employee is required to be at work or allowed to work for his or her employer is hours worked. A person hired to do nothing or to do nothing but wait for something to do or something to happen is still working. The Supreme Court has stated that employees subject to the FLSA must be paid for all the time spent in "physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer of his business."

Place of Work
Hours worked include all the time during which an employee is required or allowed to perform work for an employer, regardless of where the work is done, whether on the employer’s premises, at a designated work place, at home or at some other location.
------------

DOL.GOV, WAGE AND HOUR OFFICES:

Having trouble finding your answer on our website?

Call the Wage and Hour Division’s toll-free help line:
1-866-4USWAGE (1-866-487-9243)
TTY: 1-877-889-5627
Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time

and Tessier's The Surgical Word Book, 3rd edition.  Books you could buy used I would say would be Stedman's Pathology and Lab Medicine and Cardiology/Pulmonary word book.  These are all the books I use the most during my day.  You could buy other speciality word books as you need them and could probably go used with those.

I wouldn't bother with buying a drug book, new editions come out every year and I just stick to the FDA website and RXList as my drug references.

Also FYI, not a book, but I use my Stedman's Electronic Medical Dictationary a lot.  It's easier to open the program than it is to pick up a huge 30-pound dictionary.

My MTSO recently added new transcribers to a growing account that I've been working on for the past three years.  Yes, it is a very difficult account.  I was more than happy for the first month or so with constant IMs, phone calls at home and on my cell phone to "listen to this", emails with c&pd parts of the report asking for help filling in the blanks, did I know this doc name, etc. 

Okay, it's been a month.  I'm still getting questions constantly about things that I had to figure out for myself when I started the account!  I had nobody to help me, as it was a new account and I had never done this specialty before, so I know it's possible to just do your research.  I'm now getting moronic questions. 

Do you know this doctor's first name?  (Uhhhh, it's in the phone book, the Blue Book, in Google...)  Am I spelling this procedure right? (Hello!  Stedman's Word Book, about a million online references, a dictionary, a decent spell checker...)  Does this look right to you?  (then one of them IMs me a sentence that no, does not look right, but a little research would tell you that you've got the wrong word in there if they're talking about pain in the hip and you're using the name for a part of the small intestine!)  Come ON!   If you don't know the difference between the ilium and the ileum, what are you doing in transcription? 

The point is that I don't have time for this, when time is money and I only get paid by the line.  I've spent an average of an hour a day for over a month holding these girls' hands.  It's getting ridiculous, especially when I'm being asked questions that they could solve themselves with some RESEARCH.  I don't feel like I can "tattle" to my MTSO, because I don't trust him that much anyway -- He is as subtle as a freight train and would just make things difficult.  I may need these people to fill in for me now and then.  

I've handled it by logging out of IM when I need to just get busy and work, not answering the phone when I need to work, etc.  I am considering sending out an email asking these people to stop calling and IMing me, because I need to keep my work "rhythm", but to rather email me the question and I will get back to them before the end of the business day if it's something I know they probably cannot find on their own with research. 

Something like that.  Does anyone have any ideas for how to word this if that does not sound right? 

Livvie in Cali 

in your area to find out what to charge or just decide what you'll take to do the work.  Transcription systems depend on what your clients need.  I wouldn't spend a ton of money buying stuff because your client may not want what you just spent a fortune on.  You can find good used transcription equipment on ebay if you're willing to search for it.  Good luck.  I'm in the same boat.

A website that I use very frequently seems to have disappeared.  AAMTonline.org/resources that I use to look up terminology seems to be gone.  It has been replaced with something that is not a resource site.  Has it moved or changed names?  I would appreciate any info on this!!

I have a dumb question - Just bought a new computer and someone told me to get a flash drive to transfer all my info.  But I'm assuming that ExText that I work off of and Escription will have to be downloaded again by the tech people onto my new computer.  I can tranfer these can I?

Thanks