So you can't do the ESL doctors? Your skills may be what's limiting your success
Posted By: Successfully doing MT on 2006-06-05
In Reply to: you're the one who is unrealistic... - nm
Your skills may be limiting you. Do some work on them. See if you can bring your work up to the level necessary to do well. You can do it!
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and you are one of the success stories...sm
And congratulations to you!! But for every online success story, there are dozens of bad stories regarding meeting men/women online.
would not say success = job with national
xxx
Another success story
I graduated from CS in 2005 and was hired by a national company right away. That was 3 years ago. I tested for my CMT as soon as I reached my 2 year anniversary. I have had a great experience with working and I owe it to my training through Career Step. I think you will be fine!
Good luck to you with your studies!!!
Good for you!!! I wish you much success in your new chapter.
There are a lot of positive people on this site that can offer loads of advice, all of whom started off as "newbies" (I dislike that phrase). We all start off somewhere. I do think it is harder now a days with hospitals outsourcing, but definitely NOT impossible. I would leave you my e-mail address in case you have any questions but that is not allowed, and I never insert it because I'm afraid I'll get hate mail later on from some of the disgruntled MT's :).
Good luck!!
Typing speed is no guarantee of success
as an MT. If you haven't had any MT training, you will fail rather spectacularly. Get some training. Get GOOD training, not some matchbook-cover school. Andrews, M-Tec, Career Step--those schools will provide the training that will get you a job. Don't try to cut corners with a cheap school. If you get the right training, and if you have the talent for the job, you will not lack for work.
Career Step Success Story
Hello. Well, I graduated from Career Step in December and now have a job that I love. I thought the course was great. I still go to the Graduates Forum on Career Step everyday, and people are getting jobs everyday, even with all the negative chat that you hear on MTStars and MTChat. I know that the price was right for me and that I had a job a month after graduation. I know there was a slow hiring period in the last few months b/c of holiday, New Year, and whatnot. I don't know what negative talk has gone on about the Career Step program. I try to stay away from all the negative comments on the board - they are just depressing - lol. I hope whatever you choose works out for you. The only thing that scared me was all the EMR talk right when I graduated. It still scares me, because I love this job. But, it is pretty much out of my hands. Right now I am a happy working MT.
Good Luck :)
I'd also rather hear from a successful employer with a good plan for continued success
Success breeds success. When I look for a leader or mentor or someone to give me advice, I look for someone who has been successful. That person will have to be able to identify his or herself and have verifiable proof to back up their claims. There are ways to do that. Blind posts on message boards don't do it.
foreign doctors
Should I make more money for foreign doctors transcription? What is the going rate for nephrology transcriptions for a foreign doctor??
In the few doctors I have done that are verbatim - sm
they want it exactly as they say it, even if it does not make sense to you. That is every comma, period, new paragraph, etc. On others, my QA mgr says we can clean up grammer as long as we don't change the meaning of the sentence (as he says, as long as it is not going to kill them). We NEVER guess on drug names or doses if we cannot make them out clearly. As for the BOS or keeping with the style of the company, most doctors want it done their way no matter what the BOS says, it is not their handbook. Every company you work for does things differently, some do p.o/PO, q.i.d/QID, q.d., q. day/every day, mL/ml instead of cc, etc.
i know that ahp uses ESL doctors on their tapes
because they want you to get used to listening to accents. my original question was asking if there was anyone on here who is taking course 5 of AHP because then we could help each other, but mostly so i could get some help on a particular report. hahaha. i hate sending in reports with so many blanks. i actually really like ahp and they do send your reports back with corrections and tell you what they think your weak areas are.
my intention when i get done with ahp is to get a job working at a hospital and then when i have experience work from home. is it harder to get a job with a hospital than to get a job with a company like MedScribe or ProTrans?
Doctors' offices pay little or nothing anyway. see message
I've seen this happen before. It usually turns out to be a mess and they go back to a classic transcription system. As far as coding, they use a Superbill anyway. They don't need a coder. They just list the codes and check off the appropriate ones for each student. They don't get paid as well as if they had an actual certified coder, but they won't or can't afford a real coder. That's nothing new. As far as the transcriptionist, most dermatologists don't hire transcriptionists anyway. They scribble the notes in the patient's chart. Even if they use some voice recognition system and get poor results, it may be easier to read than the scribbled notes. I've also noted that doctors who do have transcriptionists who know what they are doing are not willing to replace them with a machine. Others are easily replaced. That's just what I've seen and I have access to small and large organizations.
The doctors should dictate better, but it is our job to decipher
whatever they are saying, flying, mumbling, eating, etc. I recommend typing what you can and then go back and relisten and see if you can get blanks. If you still can't hear listen a few more times. With experience you are able to decipher. You can slow down the dictation and that may help.
I had about 6 years' experience before I started doing the difficult ESL dictators and I was not very good, mainly because I was majorly stressed out with the whole job. I've got about 18 years' experience now and can pretty much do any ESL without any blanks. Sometimes I do have to listen 2 or more times to a word though. Sometimes when I hear it first I swear they aren't speaking English at all and a couple of times that has been the case.
Doctors speaking too fast!
Ok i need some help here, i can not understand what some of these doctors are saying because they are speaking way to fast!! I have tried slowing down their voice and speeding them up but it is not helping me at all. Please please help.
doctors speaking too fast
Well thank you for your response. I am really worried about this issue...... especially if there is a whole sentence I cant understand but I guess blanks are the only option.
Your writing skills
concern me more. It appears you have not learned punctuation. I'm not trying to be mean, but there is enough to learn without having to learn basic writing skills too. I'd rather see English whizzes go into MT.
writing skills
well, I wasn`t being all picky on here. I see mistakes,typos on here all the time. Sorry
Doctors generally won't just contract with an IC from an ad-- too much risk...sm
pretty much all the docs rely on word of mouth to find services or transcriptionists. Can you imagine turning your office transcription over to someone brand new? As an IC, not only do you have to still get the work produced when you are out sick or on vacation (do you have a back up plan?), you also have to troubleshoot file transfers, etc. all by your lil' ol' self. Yesterday, I went into the office of an internal medicine doc who had dropped our service. He moved and decided to just try to keep up with the charts himself - but after 3 months finally called desperately saying, what would it take to get set up with you again? I walked into the office, programmed his Olympus recorder, set him up with a user ID on the FTP site, and then installed an program that would allow him to place his recorder in a docking station, press OK when the "Do you want to import?" window popped up, and the software is automatically going to upload his file to the ftp site, and download the completed dictation. Then I showed him how to print it, and made some recommendations as to how he could archive his work. So you see... handling the account for the doc isn't as easy as it seems, is it?
Have you tried local clinics or doctors' offices?
I went to a local community college and decided I didn't want to work for a large national so I sent out resumes to local offices and I got a job working for a Nephrology office with great benefits. I can be done, just send resumes everywhere and test when you can.
Mumbling doctors cause major frustration!
Why can't someone just speak clearly? Grrr. Sorry, really needed to vent to someone who understands. I have re-played and re-played and it doesn't make it much better. This doctor clearly mumbles. 
Lisa/Tech Skills
Lisa,
Did you attend that in AZ? I almost did that but decided to go another way.
What do you consider good grammer skills?
What is your very good in all the other parts of MT and only average in the grammer.
Continuing to improve your skills
Continuing to improve your skills will help you convince someone to give you a break.
Your posts are full of spelling and grammatical errors. If an employer needs someone whose work is well-written and has NO spelling or grammatical errors, and they see writing from you that looks like your posts here, do you think they will believe you're capable of doing the kind of work they need you to do?
Your school should have pointed this out.
interview/skills assessment
I go in for an interview/skills assessment for the job I talked about in a thread below in a few days.
The employer knows I have never done MT before and have not had a transcription course. Also knows I took Med Terms, lots of health science courses and MS Office training. I am thinking I need to brush up on what I already know and say I know, but do you think I should spend any time looking through an MT textbook I have at home (author is Fordney - its the text they use at our local tech college)? There will be about 1-2 mos of FT training if I get the job. I'm just thinking that when I get to the part where I have to do some transcription, I would be more comfortable if I had a basic idea of how to format some of the more common reports.
I plan on reviewing mostly med terms, and how to use special characters in MS Word and just plain old spending some time messing around in MS word so if I have to use it at the assessment, I can do it blindfolded. I was thinking about looking through a list of the most commonly prescribed medications too so I have the spellings fresh in my head - I tend to have a photographic memory when it comes to spelling so simply reviewing a list might help me if I have to spell a drug (and most likely will have to do so).
Does anyone have any other recommendations?
Excellent skills are very much in demand
Excellent skills and a teachable attitude are always marketable.
If you have excellent skills and do the work the way the employers want it done, you will have many more options to choose from. If you take a course that doesn't teach all that employers expect you to know, it doesn't matter how hard you work and how much you put into it, you won't get anything out of it. You can't get out of a course what isn't there, no matter how hard you work. I recommend getting the best education you can and working hard. That pays off in the longterm.
It has to do with the education you received and what your skills are.
If you paid for a crappy course and didn't learn half of what you need to know, why should a company let you prove what little you did learn? They know which schools provide GOOD training and which do not. You also need grammar help, it's "should have" not "should of," if you don't know simple English grammar why should anyone trust your medical terminology skills?
Have you tried local hospitals, doctors, small MTSO's
That's how I started out working for a very small local MTSO, then I went on to become an employee of a small local nephrology group where I still am today with great pay and benefits. I had no experience when I stated but the small MTSO decided to give me a chance. Don't give up.
Guess what, it's not just the testing. MANY doctors are terrible dictators.
Sometimes the dictation they use for the test is from the actual doctors they are hiring MTs for. If you can't do it on the test, you can't do it, period.
Being in the right place with the right skills at the right time helps too
//
However, I might suggest you work on your grammar skills!
I agree 100% with you on this "social skills" thing..sm
I am sure you will get some flack on this one, but I agree with you. Daycare has become way to convenient for some moms to dump their kids for eight hours, and sometimes more, a day.
I also have to disagree with the other poster who says a teacher can spot the kids who never got out of the house and went to daycare or preschool before entering school. That is just not true. My 11 y/o never went to preschool and she has been an honor roll 4.0 student since day one. She will actually advance to 7th grade next year and skip 6th grade.
I have a bachelor's in business and I am a CMA. I dont use either right now because I want to be home with my kids too. I chose to stay home and do transcription to keep me in the medical field and be home for my kids.
I will never chain myself to my computer and put my kid in daycare in order to meet a line requirement for the day. It just wont happen. I am lucky to have found my employer who lets me have that freedom.
This is a wakeup call for those with inadequate skills
As technology allegedly improves and new medical procedures and techniques are created, we all have to keep our skills up. Those who have not are having a tough time keeping job these days. They may want to blame it on the changes, but it isn't the changes, it's their lack of skills. We finally have come to the place in this industry that people can't just listen and type what the doctor says. Anyone who got into this business with less-than-excellent skills is now getting a wakeup call. I think that's what this poster is telling us. She has had a wakeup call and she has seen other unqualified MTs getting a wakeup call. Those who are prepared and continue to build on their skills have a present and a future in this industry.
Looking for a newbie in South Fla. with excellent communication skills
For cardiology account.
Why not try local MTSO's or local doctors' offices
That's how I started out when I first became an MT. I found a very small local MTSO who gave me a chance and now I work for a local company and have been there for two years. It might be worth it to take a look. I basically trained at the MTSO's office for about a month so there was no testing involved at all. Just learning along the way. Good luck whatever you decide.
Excellent WORKERS, not just excellent skills...sm
those who are conscientious, accurate, dependable will always be able to find a job somewhere, though probably not MT.
She didn't say she didn't have the skills. She said she didn't have the experience.
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