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Medical Transcription, An Emerging Winner

By: Jay B Stockman

There are distinct objectives to consider when trying to choose a career, including knowing yourself, knowing your options, knowing how you constitute decisions and addressing any barriers to your decision-making. Effective career decision-making requires an abundance of work and energy; this is necessary to establish some degree of satisfaction with your career choice. One such career that has emerged as fulfilling, provocative, well paying and in demand is medical transcription. The employment of medical transcriptionists is

projected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through 2012. A growing and aging population will spur demand for medical transcription services.

Basically, a medical transcriptionist listens to dictated recordings made by a healthcare professional, and transcribes them into medical reports, correspondence, and other administrative info. While listening to the recordings, using pause techniques, sentences are keyed into a word processor, editing as necessary for grammar and clarity. Documents produced include discharge summaries, history and physical examination reports, operative reports, consultation reports, autopsy reports, diagnostic imaging studies, progress notes, and referral letters. These are returned to the health care provider for review, signature, or correction. These documents eventually become part of the patients’ permanent files, in addition to required insurance documentation.

Effective career decision-making requires an abundance of work and energy; this is necessary to establish some degree of satisfaction with your career choice.

To understand and accurately transcribe dictated reports into a format that is clear and intelligible for the reader, medical transcriptionists must understand medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, diagnostic procedures, pharmacology, and treatment assessments. As a result, medical transcriptionists should have completed postsecondary training in medical transcription, offered by many vocational schools, community colleges, and distance-learning programs. Completion of a 2-year associate degree or 1-year certificate program, including coursework in anatomy, medical terminology, legal issues relating to healthcare documentation, and English grammar and punctuation, is highly recommended, but not always required.

Working conditions are generally comfortable settings, such as hospitals, physicians’ offices, transcription service offices, clinics, laboratories, medical libraries, government medical facilities, or at home. Many medical transcriptionists work from home as employees for hospitals, and transcription services or as self-employed, independent contractors. The average salary for a medical transcriptionist is between $10.87 and $15.63. With experience, medical transcriptionists can advance to supervisory positions, home-based work, editing, consulting, or teaching.

With the increased demand for standardized records, there will be rapid employment growth in offices of physicians or other health practitioners, especially in large group practices. Medical transcription is a career that should fit your lifestyle, and bring you prosperity, and fulfillment.

About the Author

Jay B Stockman is a contributing editor for Online Medical Transcription Services Visit http://theonline-medical-transcription-services.com/ for more information.

Dr. Jay B Stockman is an individual contributor to Google Health Co-op

Dr. Jay B Stockman's public Google Health Co-op profile

Why Hire a Professional Transcriptionist to Convert Your Dictation or Audio Recordings to Typed Text?

By: Laurie Kristensen

In a discussion forum for non-fiction writers (where I had posted my introduction of myself and my professional transcription business), another member replied and mentioned that for simple dictation, she uses a voice recognition software program.

When what she had said really sank in, I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut!

Then my reaction was huge dismay and questioning, "Why should I even stay in business?" This came JUST after spending almost two months getting clear on why my transcription business feels exciting to me and realizing that I want to assist and support creative, positive, motivated people to succeed in ways they have not been able to before, working on interesting projects!

I imagined emptying my transcription business website of all information -- just leaving a notice (as a ‘public service’) pointing out to the people who THINK they need me to transcribe their audios that they should go and buy that software instead!

Yikes! Drastic thoughts!

But seriously, then I started thinking some more...

I mean, it's a legitimate question! Why SHOULD someone hire me if they can buy software for dictation?

In what situations would dictation software be inferior than having a live, intelligent human being (who is passionate about helping her clients succeed) listening and transcribing their audio material instead?

Knowing such software exists, ANYONE might appropriately ask that question!

Since I've never worked with this kind of software, I realize I may not understand it perfectly, so I decided to ask some questions...

With audio recordings of interviews, groups, or live teleclasses, seminars, and so forth, how does the software distinguish between multiple speakers? How does it know to punctuate and break the text into paragraphs appropriately?

When people just speak naturally, their speech is filled with tons of 'ahs' and 'ummms' and 'you know's' and so forth. Does the software know to filter those out when appropriate? People also string multiple sentences together with 'and' forever! Does the software know when to break the sentences apart?

How about when the quality of the audio recording is not top-notch, such as when there is background noise or people speaking on top of each other... how does it handle that?

Even when there is only a single speaker, if they do not dictate punctuation, paragraphs, etc., does the software intuit that correctly?

If the software does not handle these issues well, how much work is involved in cleaning up the text?

Also, in my relationships with the clients I've worked with, there is the unquantifiable element of me being an objective outsider who can catch errors or discrepancies in the CONTENT. And I often even come up with valuable ideas to help them improve their material!

There is a creative, collaborative give and take between my clients and me that often seems to be of benefit to us BOTH beyond the action of me ‘just’ transcribing their audio recordings.

So, I concluded, there IS still a need for my services by many people! Not all, but I’m sure enough to keep me busy. I actually do enjoy this kind of work under the right circumstances and with the types of clients I intend to connect with!

So in the end, I thanked that discussion forum member for her post and the internal thinking process it sent me through, because it helped me face a fear and come out stronger on the other side!

And then, as a welcome validation of everything I had deduced on my own, quickly after I had submitted my reply to her, she was kind enough to reply with a more detailed explanation of how the voice recognition software works and its definite limitations -- everything I had suspected, and even more!

I truly have a valuable, worthwhile service to offer my clients. I’m very proud of my skills, my dedication, and my opportunity to make a contribution to the entire world by assisting my clients to develop their own gifts in ways they might never on their own IF it was up to themselves alone to type out their wisdom and creativity!

About the Author

Copyright Laurie Kristensen, 2005-Present. All rights reserved.

Laurie Kristensen owns and operates a successful audio transcription and typing business from home, visit http://www.LKTranscription.com Also be sure to browse through her Success Resources at http://www.LKSuccess.com

You have permission to publish this article in its entirety, unchanged, electronically or in print as long as the bylines, URL, and copyright are included.

Keywords: transcription my transcription business, i had, http//wwwlktranscriptioncom, transcription business, professional transcription business), my professional transcription, software, my transcription, transcription

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