INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY!!
Posted By: SPIRIT328 on 2009-02-28
In Reply to:
Hi everyone. I'm a self-taught Transcriptionist by the luck of having gone to a great secretarial school, before pc's then I got a 4 year nursing degree. I had to go on disability and used my resources to get as far as I have. My word Expander is awesome. I just feel like I cant get any faster and have trouble with ESL docs just like when i was a nurse and had to verify their info or you could kill someone. I am desperatte to learn the tricks of the trade and would be so appreciative of an older mentor. Do I make templates? Do I just type 12 hours a day until the transcription goddess gives me some answers. I have worked for 2 differrent places and everyone wants to keep their productivity secrets away from us. I'm a disabled single mom and I would gladly give away any info some kind soul would help me with. Any angels out there? Im going broke and don't know if I will get more proficient by just working more. No QA people I have talked to will tell me anything and I work with them....Spirit329...Prayers to you all.
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Increasing production
I am a pretty new MT. I did an internship and then got hired on but I am having trouble increasing my production. I have heard about work Expanders and how they can help speed up production, but have never used one and am not sure which is the best one. Any tips on Word Expanders or other ways to increase my production would be greatly appreciated.
I second productivity talk sm
I question how helpful it can be having someone send you expanders. You would have to have the Expanders and a list to constantly stop and look at and memorize. Making your own expansions in a way that makes sense to you will boost your productivity faster. If you think you can memorize someone else's system and abbreviations, then go for it.
I just re-read that and hope you don't think it is being snarky - it is honest-to-god advice. I have found the most effective way to make expansions is by creating them on the fly as I am transcribing. When I notice I have typed the same phrase three times in a report I stop right there and make an expansion. For most phrases I use the first letter of each word. For single words you just have to do what makes sense to you. Many of my expansions end in -x so that they are not confused with real words i.e. medsx expands to medications because meds is a word that I might actually use.
Another thing - if you make an expansion for something like "-year-old Caucasian male" take the time to put in the others like it, i.e. "-year-old male," "-year-old African-American male." If you put in "left foot" take the time to do "right foot" and "left leg" and "right leg." It will take some time now, but using a day or two of slow-down now will save you time in many subsequent documents and boost your production quickly.
Do you have an Expander or are you working from AutoCorrect? I can probably make better suggestions once I know what you use. I mainly use Instant Text, so my suggestions might not be relevant to you if you use something very different.
Good luck - developing a system of your own and constantly building on it is the way to go.
Productivity and compensation questions
Stephanie, the software platforms for each company greatly affect your productivity (lines per day) which also should affect the compensation per line you receive (amount you charge), so both are pretty nebulous questions and I usually give a pretty nebulous answer! ;)
I can give a ballpark estimate on the amount I can produce, because I've been doing this since time began. Being a new hire, I'd note on the application that you haven't transcribed in a production environment, so you have no way of knowing your potential output.
As far as what I charge, I usually put something like "varies with account," because it's really moot - they're going to test you and figure out where they can fit you into the scheme of things, then offer you a rate that keeps their profit margin intact skewed just a tad to to the high or the low end depending on the amount and type of experience you have.
Hopefully, the recruiter who receives your application will have enough knowledge of the field to realize both of these questions can have a wide range of answers, because of the variables involved. I hope this helps!
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