Leave a blank. Leaving a blank may be bad, but it is better than guessing

• CyMed - MT Hopeful
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and not put what you charge. Actually, I would do some calling. I am also in Washington State-where are you at? I also graduated from At-Home Professions and it just gave me the BASIC skills. I wish I had more but that mostly comes from learning (I read your other posts). I had a job before I graduated. I was mentored and learned a specialty. That went great until the work slowed down in January. Now I started physical therapy. It is going okay but there is a learning curve and I have no mentor. I signed on for part-time as I have 2 children and another on the way but it has been very full-time and very stressful. I may have to switch to something else. I have been doing this for almost a year. I would highly suggest seeing if you could work evenings at a hospital near you if you have someone to watch your child. This would give you the experience and you could work at home within a year or two. This is not an option for me. In January when the work slowed down I literally got on the phone with every doctors office in my area. I had about 4 job offers. But again most of them were full time or in the office/hospital and not at home. Keep trying!

I once was in your position. After Andrews, I also kept my outside job for several months while taking on a PT MT job. When I reached the same $ amount doing transcription PT as my FT outside job, I went FT at home. Yes, you still may be slower at first, but you will have the motivation (and more time) to keep increasing those line counts. Pretty soon you'll wonder why you didn't make the switch sooner. :)

Good luck to you!

instructions on how to notate a blank.   I have 20 years of experience and I have only had one test in my career that I have had to leave a blank,  but there are usually different levels of reports.  One report may be very clearly dictated, clinic type work where there really isn't a lot of medical terminology.  Another may be an acute care report, possibly an Op, and then one may be a report there the sound quality is bad, an ESL dictator, or a fast talking US dictator.

The company is trying to get an idea of your skill level.  If you do very well on the first report but not so well on the second and horrible on the third, then they will probably offer you a clinic account and start you off at the bottom of the pay scale.  

Leaving a blank wouldn't count against you as much as guessing at something and getting it wrong.   I don't think leaving a blank will stop you from being offered a position, but excessive blanks would probably would. 

Hi, I'm a newbie to this board and hope someone can help me.My experience has been working from home for a clinic, but driving back and forth picking up/dropping off micro cassettes and using them in a regular transcriber at home. They used word perfect 5.1 (yes, I said 5.1, remember the blue screen from 15 years ago?) and I save all my work on a 3-1/2" floppy and that's how I have done it for the past 5-1/2 years. Well, now they are downsizing, bringing all transc. inhouse for the secretaries to do so here I am looking for a job. Since I have only done one speciality, I am limited, however, I am a super fast learner and pick up on things very quickly. My question - I have been doing a lot of reading and searching job lists. I don't know which is the best equip to get. I have taken a test for one company that worked fine with an olympus foot pedal and worked on any program on my computer (itunes, Express scribe, jukebox, dss, windows media, and quicktime player) but I tried to take another test through startstop/gearplayer (vox file). I couldn't get that one to play. In your exp. should I have two foot pedals? I'm afraid I will get hired and not be prepared. Also, is it possible to get used to the hot keys on express scribe (which I downloaded free already) and not even use a pedal? I'm sure I will have more questions later, just didn't want to wear out my welcome on my first post as I know this is a long one. Thank you so much for spending your valuable time on this!

Sherrie

blanks since that seems to be more of an issue.   The speed will come with practice.   My very first day I did about 670 lines, no macros, no previous MT experience, no MT education, and I nearly flunked typing in school.   I have been at this for nearly 20 years and I can routinely do 300 lph and sometimes closer to 400 lph, but not consistently, and those are proofed client ready lines.

I'm assuming you are working at home and if you aren't this won't apply, but if you are on-line many times throughout the day, work on only getting on-line to check your e-mails.  If you can wait to send work in, write down all your questions and get on-line at the end of the day to investigate.   If you are allowing yourself to be distracted by TV or household chores, make yourself work 2 hours before getting up.  You can set a timer if you need to.  Personally I find my biggest time waster is the internet. I get on to look something up and 30 minutes later I get off and I never looked up what it was I got on for, but checked e-mails again and answered them, surfed my regular sites, etc.

After you have gotten better about filling in blanks then work on your speed.   I set the speed of my dictation up a bit and increase it a notch every few months. 

If you get corrected files back from QA save them.  Print them out and put them in a notebook by doctor.   When I started my current position I had lots of experience, just not with ESL dictators and I had lots of them.  I was overwhelmed because I had several blanks in almost every report and and I can usually go months at a time with no blanks.   When I had the corrected reports to look at I was able to decipher what they were saying and couldn't believe that I didn't hear it the first go round.