not too sure of skills, need advice
Posted By: luvintypin on 2007-11-02
In Reply to:
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? 
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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!!
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".
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!
Need fast skills update
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.
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
x
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
x
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
x
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
Advice to YOU..1st learn to spell before insulting poster and trying to give advice...sm
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
x
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
x
Would state you are a fast learner with good computer skills
and able to pick up things quickly once you are shown. Good luck!!
Valuable post, thanks. MT plus Skills Upgrade minus Complaining = Dollars. NM
x
Sound advice from a fellow MT if you want advice or support (sm)
I have been an MT for over 10 years. I also am getting burnt out, tired of my job, day in day. However, I do love transcription and make excellent money at it, have grossed over $50,000 per year the last 5 years. I decided to go back to nursing school and am very happy with my choice. However, over these 10 years of transcription I have had my ups and downs. My biggest issue with being at home working is lack of socialization, being home day in and day out with just the kids and the animals really gets to a person, sure hubby is home at night and thinks working from home is the easy life, thus the return to school and boy has my overall enjoyment of life changed once I realized I was the problem, not everyone else and I needed to find myself again.
Anyway, my biggest advice to you three-fold:
1. Get into counseling for yourself, find out who you are and what your needs are, whether or not you think you need to, I sense you are feeling overwhelmed and need someone other than your family to talk to that can be nonjudgmental to your feelings and needs.
2. If you're only making $100 after you pay preschool you can either keep doing it and be miserable, or quit because you are lucky enough to have a husband who can support the family without your income. (See how fast his mind changes just by losing the income you do have as to whether your job means anything.) Or look for a different company or office that you like more and are more productive if you really want to do transcription (lots of fish in the sea as far as companies).
3. Find a local "mom's" group where you can get out and socialize. MOPS (mother's of preschoolers) is an excellent one that is nationwide, they have a website. Also Mom2Mom is in a lot of areas. They provide a once a week time for moms with kids the same age to get together, socialize, (some offer spirtual guidance some don't) and each week a different mom takes a turn watching everyone else's children at the facility that hosts it so the other moms can talk about things they have in common. Every stay-at-home and work-from-home mom needs to socialize with adults, without their kids, or they will have a nervous breakdown eventually no matter how much they love their kids.
Sorry so long but it does get better but you have to take the first step at making yourself happy.
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!
My people skills are just fine. I just want to hire people who want to work.
I've not been ugly, I've asked questions, legitimate ones. Please tell me what is wrong with that. This site is not just for MTs, it is for QA Editors, Supervisors, Service Owners, there's even sections for Billers, Coders, and Nurses.
my advice
would be to get an MT job that pays by the hour until your experience and accuracy come together well.
I believe that MQ will pay by the hour until you reach "production" -- but i am not sure if there is a time limit on that. I believe i've seen where other companies do this also.
I admire your refusal to quit -- i believe that is one of the essential traits of a transcriptionist. Hang in there. Very little worth attaining comes easy, you'll make it.
Need some advice
I know this isn't MT-related, but it has gotten me so upset that I can't work, so maybe it is MT-related after all. Anyway, if anyone has been in this situation, can you please tell me how you successfully handled it? My son wanted to go away for the weekend and asked to use my credit card to secure a hotel room. We went online to Hotels.com and found a nice place. I put in my credit card number and was given a room confirmation. I then received an e-mail from the hotel telling me there were no rooms available. I called the hotel and they told me I would have to address it with Hotels.com since they were the ones with my credit card information. I called Hotels.com and they told me that my card had been swept for the entire amount of the stay ($276.00!) but since there were no rooms available, the money would be credited back to my account. I got my credit card statement yesterday and they only credited back $71.00 of my money, causing me to incur and over-the -limit fee of another $29.00. I don't know where to turn to get this problem resolved. Do I call Hotels.com and ask them to reimburse my over the limit fee? Do I call my credit card company and tell them that it was Hotel.com's fault for hitting my account for the whole amount when they said they weren't going to? If anyone has been through this kind of thing before, I would really appreciate your input. Needless to say, I will NEVER use Hotels.com ever again!! Thanks in advance for your help!
Well said! I will take that advice.
Here's some advice from another old MT
Give Medquist a try. I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding MQ, but there is a lot positive about the company, too. The transcription platform is very, very easy to learn and quite MT friendly. Set your boundaries about the number of accounts you are willing to do right from the beginning.
You will never have to worry about not getting paid on time. If you need no benefits, go with the statutory employee status. There's flexibility with that.
There are apparently many MQ haters on this board, but there are many more who are happy with MQ. They just don't happen to spend a lot of time posting here.
Whereever you land next, may it be a great fit for you. :)
Need advice, please --
My 15-year-old niece has confided that she has met a boy through an over 21 chat room and has been emailing him (supposedly, he is 18). He has been to her house, and her parents have met him and they think he is a nice boy, but they have no idea how they really met. I have serious reservations about this and feel I should tell her parents, because even if this one is very nice, he is still too old for her, and what about the next one?
Advice
Learning a secondary account can be challenging but it also makes you a more well-rounded transcriptionist. The more accounts, the more doctors you work on, the better off you are in the long run. If its hard at first, work that much harder to learn it. You can't have to much experience!
Need advice
I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice to give.....I have been debating changing jobs. I currently make $15 an hour doing transcription in office. The delima I am having is that the whole reason I started doing transcription was so that I could work from home. I have been doing transcription for 4 years and my job is really easy and I am happy with the money, there are however other down falls with the company and I am not able to have the flexability of working at home, therefore dealing with the stress of not being able to always be there for "home" things. I have three school age kids, and they are all very active. My question is....Do I have a chance of finding anything else working at home or do I just try and suck it up where I am at??? I really have not started looking, so I am not sure what is actually out there. I hate changing jobs, but I also don't want to settle.
Just need some outside help and opinions! Thanks, KL
RE: Need advice
Don't forget your taxes. You can really wind up in a mess if you don't get on top of that right away.
Need Advice! What would you do?
Want opinions about something which has come up at work and need some advice. I am the lead Transcriptionist in a department with three other people.
Last year, one of our physicians in the practice was fired and rejoined another practice in town. He currently has a lawsuit against the company about the firing.
Today, I saw letters typed by one of the girls in the my department for this particular doctor. (because this patient switched physician groups). Apparently she has been working for him on the side since October of 2004. I am not sure if she is still typing for him or not.
My question is this, would this be something you would bring to the manager's attention, talk to my coworker, or just let it go.
On one hand I feel she is being dishonest and not loyal to our current company. I do not know if she is saying anything about our practice to the other doctor or not. Also at looking at the letters, she set them up exactly the same way we do. Isn't this considered a conflict of interest?
Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!
Re: Advice - sm
My question - is she using YOUR company's equipment to do this typing? Is she doing it on YOUR company's time? THAT would be a NO-NO to me, along with the other points you mentioned, it doesn't seem quite the kosher thing to do.
Thanks for the advice!!! nm
nm
Thanks for the advice!
That does sound reasonable. Anything to get my foot in the door would be helpful.
need advice
I worked for a multispecialty medical center for 6 years that shut down and sent all transcription out to a service. I got a job with spheris. I love the company itself, they are great. But the problem is money. This is my first experience with production pay. To make what I made by the hour, I would have to produce 1500 lines a day. I am now producing about 1000 a day more or less, depending on how much research I need to do, if my cable or power goes out or if their server goes down or is slow.-- I do ER, consults, admit and discharge summaries, no operative reports. Cant really use a lot of expansions, only for simple phrases or individual words, no macros, mostly straight typing. I figured once I got used to their system and compiled all my provider samples and got my Expander glossaries pretty much built I would improve, which I have, but I really cant see myself ever doing much more than 1200 a day, and that would be with no "P" breaks. I am still having to stop multiple times during the day to enter drug names in my drug glossary so I dont have to look them up all the time to see if they are generic or brand names-their spell-check doesnt have automatic caps, which is another problem for me because I am having a hard time training myself to hit that shift key, I am constantly entering text into my expander. The terminology is not a problem for me.
I am reading that a lot of you guys are doing 400 lines an hour.!!! My previous job didnt have a word expander, so I know I need to utilize that better. How do you do it, what am I doing wrong, what can I do to improve, do I need to just forget it and apply at Home Depot? I LOVE transcription!!!!
Looking for advice
Hey, anyone in the Portland/Beaverton area I could speak to about the "real deal" in MT work in the current environment? I'd really appreciate it. Off line at moosefeather at msn dot com :)
My advice to you
You are doing just fine. Trust me, having kids makes it more difficult to get more work done, but you will soon find a good schedule that works for you. I work for Medquist as an SE and am able to work WHENEVER I want which makes it much easier for me, considering I have 3 kids, ages 7, 3, and 2. Your average of 500-700 lines a day is really good for just starting in July. Don't fret, this is one job that you only get better with in time because you become more used to the doctors and type faster, and don't forget to keep adding to your word expanders.
Another tip I can give is to only work when your child is sleeping, otherwise it becomes too much of a distraction to have your child awake and running around while you try to concentrate on your work. Not to mention, it could also be dangerous if you can't see or hear them like you should.
I appreciate your advice and will certainly
take it to heart.
Just wanted you to know though that I already know the information you posted. I had an MT business for 5 years. I've done MT work for 25 years.
I may be new with MQ but I'm no where near new with MT work. This isn't my first time to do IC/SE work either.
My rainy day money isn't going to the govt. It goes for what I want it to. I've been self-employed for a few years now. I know what I'm doing.
Thank you for your advice though!
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