Speaking as someone who used to do medical transcription - it sucks monkey balls (am I allowed to say that in this forum?) Really, it’s rotten. However you can expect to make around $15/hour which is ok, assuming you’re a quick typist. By quick I mean about 85+ WPM and you have to be accurate.
Training is not a must, but it will help - to avoid it you can just get a medical dictionary and a CPS manual - looking everything up will slow you down a LOT at first, but you will pick stuff up eventually.
The other option is stuffing envelopes. Boring as hell, but you can do it watching TV. If you can get paid per piece, as opposed to per hour, that’s better. Try conference centres. Also, if you have a medical school in your area, see if they have a continuing medical education department - they run tonnes of conferences and may need help with mailouts on a semi-regular basis.
A mystery shopper course is offered at many community colleges as part of the community ed. or non-credit instruction program. A look at your local adult ed. offerings might also reveal this course.
How exactly does one break into the Medical Transcription line of work?
It sounds like it would work well for a person like me, but I also can’t find any information online that isn’t part of the glut of sleazy ‘register now for more info’ type websites.
If there’s a medical school in your area, I would start there. Option two is hospitals - they will generally advertise for transcriptionists on a fairly regular basis - the turnover is pretty high because the job sucks monkey balls. Not too many people make a career of it.
Look for a medical transcription course at your local community or technical college.
One of the issues that you might be looking at with an in-home transcription service is privacy. Most of the physician practices I’m familiar with will not allow information to leave their office for fear of risking a HIPAA violation. OTOH, local hospitals sometimes have employees who work out of their house on hospital-supplied word processors.
The sucking monkey balls thing… could you tell us more about that? I’m honestly thinking of doing transcription as a PT job, and would love to know more about what sucks about it before I spend any money.
(Oh, and I realize I was bad and started another thread about this without doing a search first. Dang, me… just… dang!)
I know two guys who tie fishing lures at home. It’s a little extra money, and they get their own lures for next to nothing. The demand is seasonal, but they make ice-fishing lures, too.
When we were putting together the fundraising dinner for my daughter’s school, one of the other parents designed the theme logo for the party on her home computer and also produced many of the various things used to advertise the event (bookmarks, stickers to send home on the kids, nametags for the party, reminder fliers, etc.) There was another person who provided hand-done calligraphy for special invitations for the teachers.
I think both of them do similar kinds of things for money when they aren’t donating their time.