Medical Transcriptionists - Any advice for me?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’m thinking of becoming a medical transcriptionist. I have no experience in the medical field, other than more or less growing up in a hospital because of a birth defect and the resulting surgeries to correct it.

Anyways, I would love to work from home, and I’m fairly good at typing. (Don’t have to look at the keys at all, and yes I know there’s Alot more to the field than being able to type well.) I’ve looked into the field a bit and found that alot of people do work from home, but there are also a fair bit that work in doctor’s offices, hospitals, or for a medical transcription service.

My questions for you are - How did you get started? What school did you go to? Was it an online school?

I’ve found an online school that Seems like it would work out.

http://andrewsschool.com/

Anyone ever heard of it before? What was your experience with them? Or someone you know went there?

Also, how many hours do you work a day? How many days a week? What is the average salary? I’ve looked at the US Department of Labor Study -

Are those incomes comparable to what you make? How long have you been a medical transcriptionist? Have you heard how the job market is for newbies? Is it better to work from home doing this? Or for a doctor’s office, hospital, etc…

Any answers would be Greatly appreciated. I’ve been on the board as a lurker for years and I don’t remember anyone talking about this field, so I Hope there’s at least one of you out there that knows more about it than I do. :slight_smile:

Thanks for any replies!

2

I did not go into the field, but I took the course from the Andrews School.

They were not a good fit for me. The instructors tended to use oblique methods of communication that I found frustrating, and the resources they had available to answer questions were scattered and badly organized. I would have a simple question and would have to read the entire board to find an answer, while asking directly was often met with a peremptory “read the board.” Assignments were graded similarly, with comments made about how I didn’t “read the board” to find an answer to X. Good organization of their material would have helped enormously. They prided themselves on their instructors, but I didn’t feel like I learned anything from the instructors at all. I was never comfortable asking questions because of the atmosphere.

The materials you would get seem very valuable. There are many many hours of transcription practice, plus a number of books and resources.

I got right to the end of the course and realized that I was never going to be a transcriptionist and that I really didn’t care to finish. That was a childish reaction, though I’m certain I was right about a career in transcription.

I hope this was useful.

3

Here’s a thread I started on the subject a while back, when my mom was looking at getting into the field. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=468942&

4

I finished the basic units of my course at an adult ed school back in March and took and passed the RMT exam in June. I am continuing in the class just to finish up some specialties.
I find it very hard to get MTSOs to hire newbies; they all want at least a year or so of experience. I have found ads on GoMDT, Hotjobs, SimplyHired, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist. Sometimes hospital websites will also list these jobs.

Don’t limit yourself to just med. transcription; go for corporate, legal, and media transcription; and for medical records, clerk, medical data entry, health or medical editor, etc.

I’ve had five interviews in the past few weeks–two for pathology lab medical data entry, one for a non-medical editorial remote position, one for an in-house health editor job, and one for a temporary proofreading position.

It might not hurt to take coding as well if you have already gone through med terminology and transcription courses. It opens up more job possibilities.

5

Factoid to think about: Voice recognition technology is improving by leaps and bounds. I now use Dragon Naturally Speaking medical for my dictation needs, thereby resulting in a reduced workload for actual living transcriptionists.

I don’t have any knowledge of how this will affect the future job market for transcriptionists, but I’d have to be concerned that demand for such a service will decrease.

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone with a knowledgeable opinion on the topic.

6

A friend of mine used to support herself by doing transcription for an assortment of MD’s. Those jobs went offshore. This happened a few years ago; she found a job in a medical office–doing more than transcription.

Please check out the job situation where you live. Do not rely on what any school tells you.

7

Thanks for replies guys!

I had actually thought about the Dragon Naturally Speaking program and how that would most likely affect the future of transcription. It’s definately something to consider.

I also have some hearing damage and am pretty sensitive to the use of headphones - I get earaches easily. I was thinking that I could just route the sound through my computers speakers, but after reading more about how transcription is done, I’m not so sure.

I’ll definately consider all of the pros and cons before going to school for it though. I’d hate to invest any money and regret that I started it at all.

8

I don’t know the state of medical transcription in particular, but if it’s primarily dictating doctors’ notes then I can see how Dragon and other speech recognition is phasing out the need for medical transcriptionists.

Where you might also want to look is legal or business transcription. Legal transcription is pretty big now as more police departments, district attorneys, and law offices lay off their internal transcription pool and outsource to transcription companies. You can’t feed suspect and witness interviews into a speech recognition program and come out with anything like reasonable accuracy, so there’s still a need for human transcriptionists. Same with corporate quarterly earnings press conferences, which makes up a large chunk of our corporate business.

Unfortunately, speakers are horrible for transcription. The cheapest pair of headphones may not be better than the best pair of computer speakers, but it’s a near thing. There’s simply no comparison in fidelity, and transcriptionists using computer speakers have always been unacceptably inaccurate in my experience.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but you need to be very, very sure you can get decent accuracy from speakers before you try to actually do paid work with them, or you’ll find yourself dismissed quickly. If you’re really interested in doing transcription work, I would put in the time, effort, and money to find a pair of headphones that don’t cause earaches.

Of course, the quality of the audio is sometimes a problem, and while I don’t have any general problem with my ears or hearing, I’ve listened to recordings that hurt me pretty badly, and I only have to check a few minutes, usually, I don’t have to type the whole damn thing.

On the upside, taking frequent breaks from transcription isn’t a bad thing. Depending on the company and type of work you take, you may not have the chance for lots of breaks, but most of our legal and law enforcement work is a 3-day turnaround, so as long as you don’t overburden yourself you get a lot of leeway in how you work.

Disclaimer: I do work for a transcription company, but I’d prefer not to say which one. I’m not sure how strenuously we’re looking for new transcriptionists anyway.

9

I have sinus issues and get earaches. I bought the kind of headphones that surround the ear instead of resting on the pinna. It really helped.