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I don't post here super often but I could use some thoughts (m)

Posted By: MT on 2008-11-21
In Reply to:

and support.  Don't flame me for sounding weak or needy.  I had a client call me out of the blue today (actually his secretary called me) and told me that I was no longer transcribing his letters.  But were clear I'd still be transcribing for his partner.  I asked why, she said she didn't know what his "gripe" was but that he made her be the bad guy.  It feels personal to me, not because he did it on a personal level, but I guess it hurts like a personal attack because my work is very serious to me and I'd hate to think that he thought I wasn't do my job well enough.  I know I was.  I often felt undermined or a little accused by the staff at times.  I was supposed to pick up x number of times per week and about a month ago they called and said "now, how often ARE you picking up?" which sounded like they were not believing I was coming when I should.  I pick up after hours, have my own key.  Other times I'll get lists of reports they need.  Some I've given them weeks or months earlier.  Some I don't have at all, BUT not because I lost them, because they weren't dictated.  I keep a physical list of all reports on each tape I do and if it's not on the tape, it's not on the list.  I mentioned this to the sec. once before in my defense when she's said "he dictated such and such" when he actually only thought he did or accidentally taped over it something, kwim?  Things are so tight for us right now as they are for so many of us.  I guess I just need to vent and ask if this has happened to others?  Where you felt undermined and let go unfairly?  Or if you've just had doctors come and go every so often for really no good reason?  I feel bad.  These doctors' wives are my friends (were before I worked for him) and I think that makes it feel more personal.  I've been very good about and tried really hard not to mention personal in the office or the office when I see them socially so the two are separate.  I just feel like he was unhappy with me and I often wondered if he was just by the questions the girl asked me and made me feel like she thought I wasn't doing my job right.  But I really thought if HE had a problem, HE would talk to me so I was okay.  Guess not,  huh?  Thanks if you even read this far.  If you have a prayer or two to spare for me that it all works out, that I find work fast to replace this income and that my family doesn't feel any effects from it.  Also that the relationship and my feelings are healed, that I can overcome it.  I'd just appreciated any shared experiences.  Thanks.  (P.S.  Not in the best frame of mind right now, so I apologize for any typos or errors.  This is my disclaimer that I'm not going to proofread this, lol).


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I don't post here super ofte, but I could use some thoughts

I have worked for many, many docs as an IC. You always do the dirty work, reprints, redelivery, etc. I did all those willingly and then was told on Friday by Peds manager they had someone to work in the office. After about two months, they called and wanted me back. I went back with about 20 tapes she had not done and just did not show up one day.

Little man syndrome, one doctor whom I worked for, called it.

Be encouraged, you will probably get him back. Sounds like you do very good work. I have had so many just like this I have lost count and now work for a company with NO money - ha. The docs around here dictate to the company I work for and the hospital pays for it!

Another day in the life of a transcriptionist.

There are probably errors in this too so go ahead and nit pick.
Is there a place to post requests for positive thoughts?
I applied for a job that I really want and need.  The waiting game is killing me.  I know it's out of my hands now, but I'm so antsy waiting to hear back from them.  Please send me some positive job mojo thoughts.  Thank you.
Super!
I admire that at only 19 you were so level-headed and such a hard worker. Sounds like you enjoy the challenge of being an MT.
Super Hint
Unless you need a microphone attached, I would suggest Dictaphone earphones.  They hae excellent sound quality.  Also...if you have extra noise from your speakers, plug right into your PC and a lot of that noise will disappear.  That works with any headphones.
Super Hint
Unless you need a microphone attached, I would suggest Dictaphone earphones.  They hae excellent sound quality.  Also...if you have extra noise from your speakers, plug right into your PC and a lot of that noise will disappear.  That works with any headphones.
Super Walmart
I really am not impressed with Wal-Mart.  We now have a super walmart and due to have another one open on the other side of town.  Who needs two walmarts?  It is always very crowded.  Very few registers open.  Groceries are higher in a lot of cases than my supermarket.  I only buy a few things that I see are cheaper.  Overall I do better at my local grocery store and I like the produce better.  You can never just "run in" anymore.  Smaller is better! I just hope they don't put my favorite store out of business.  I think alot of people feel this way though.  Not too many people I know do their weekly grocery shopping there. 
and you are super woman
if you can work only 3 days a week and make that kind of lines/money, then by all means...do tell????? how do you do it?????? I am sure 100's of transcriptionists are waiting to hear this one! Let's see, you must be super woman, the fastest typist on the earth.
One of my personalities is Super MT.
x
There was a time before the super tech
which enabled NY companies to hire someone from down south or anywhere else the cost of living is so much cheaper, and then to it so many steps further, i.e. India, the Philippines, our just plain VR, and our (my)potential dropped from $25+/hour with benes, to a little more than 1/2 that. Sad but true.
Has anyone had 8mm or Super 8 film transferred to DVD?

Seems to me it would be a great X-mas gift.  I found one of my brother (now 55+) when he advanced from cub scouts to boy scouts.


I tried to check out a couple of websites, but it's all Greek to me.


I'm fighting a super Wal-Mart

I'm in the process of fighting the planning/building of a super Wal-Mart down the street from where I live, which is out in a rural neighborhood, about 4 miles from town.  I liken this incredible increase in Wal-Marts across the US as very similar to what is happening in the MT world.  Wal-Mart gets something like 80-85% of their merchandise from other countries--it's just like outsourcing!  Think of all the jobs that have been lost to this in our country.


I understand what some of you are saying about not having the money to pay a few dollars more on whatever it is that you want to buy, but it's no different from transcription!  Those who are outsourcing the transcription to foreign countries are very similar to what Wal-Mart does with its suppliers.


Where does this leave our country?  It's certainly scary for the future of our children in the United States.


Super Bowel Weekend? LOL

SUPER BOWL COUNT-DOWN!

what if your dial-up is super slow
I sign on at 24.o kbps if i'm lucky. how much will this affect my service. i'm just a student now, but we don't have cable or DSL where i live either.
Super low volume today!
  I've typed 4 reports in 4 hours.   No work!!!   Happy Holidays!
is there a super-light touch
keyboard that is also split and (hope upon hope) with a rise in the middle like the MS ones?
the work must be super easy (sm)
I've been doing this for a long time and that sounds high to me.
Super Bowl is on but I have to work.....
I hear everyone out front watching and having a good time.  Well, they probably think I'm upset because I have to be back here working, but secretly I'm GLAD I have to work.  I'd rather watch reruns of Mayberry RFD than football.  I'd even rather have to work! 

We just got done having our Super Bowl Party
My friend and I usually don't watch, I don't like football, but we always have a fun party. This game was actually exciting. And me being from NY, I was glad the Giants won.
Don't feel sorry for your super, she knew exactly what she was doing to you.
You just gave her the opportunity to screw you by asking for work. Shame on her.
I'm sorry. Of course you're super upset. SM
But you're certainly not alone. Your experience is normal these days, shared by millions.

Wages have been stagnating and even decreasing for the working and lower middle classes in this country and many others for some years now, not just MTs. The low cost of goods coming in from overseas and our rising home equity, on paper anyway, has kept us from feeling and recognizing this.

Now providers are being forced to reduce costs as much as possible and channel more of their resources to patient care. And this economic collapse is increasing them horrendously. Many hospitals, for instance, are finding teir income is collapsing with it, the income they pay us with.

More and more people are losing jobs, and with them the insurance that pays your doctors. They're undoubtedly worried about the future themselves.

Technology advances, which I believe will ultimately be to our benefit, mean we can produce at least twice as many lines as we did just a handful of years ago and I-don't-know-how-many more than in the old Selectric and Liquid Paper many of us remember well. THIS IS HAVING A VERY POWERFUL EFFECT ON WHAT INSTITUTIONS SHOULD AND WILL PAY PER LINE. An acquaintance of mine for a period of years was making over $150K per year as a court reporter because her production increased enormously while her pay per line stayed the same. Needless to say, she was grossly overpaid. Governments may have the money to do that, hospitals can't.

In any case, not only are most workers at our level on salaries not getting raises (or such flimsy ones that they're just pretences), many are losing or have lost their jobs outright due to new technology. Many others have retrained to new ways of doing their old jobs. And will end up retraining again, and maybe yet again before they retire.

As people working on a production basis, MTs have a tremendous incentive to increase the number of lines we produce per hour by upgrading our skills to take advantage of new technology, our success in this determining whether we are forced to move on to other work with many of the same problems, at least stay at par, or even manage to give ourselves something of a raise.

Like people across the planet in an era of galloping change, we have no choice but to change with it or fall by the way.

Good luck, EB. I hope your choices work out for you. And that your clients won't realize in future just how fast you can produce their reports with the resources available to you.
I use super antispyware -- it's free

when my computer starts to drag, i just run that program.  it usually clears it up pretty quick.  i should probably do it on a daily basis, but i usually end up doing it once every couple of weeks. 


the other poster might be right, though.  you may need more memory.  have you always had this problem or just lately?  did you install any new programs just before this started.  if not, i would think it's just adware slowing you down and the super antispyware should help.


Yep, cardiology here, too! Used to hate those super long sm
op notes but found I got great lines with them! Now, I can't wait to do them.
by hour definitely $15-- I am not super fast so this would benefit
x
Mine is a Super Wal-Mart too! They are usually up front near the
Request them, they are just about the best of any store! They roast them in the back where the deli meats and cheeses are.
Super! Great news! Happy MT Day to you, too!
x
I love them, but can only drink them super cold.
I put them in the freezer before I drink them. It makes a huge difference in the taste.

I used to drink coke too. I think I kind of replaced it with these though, lol.
It depends...if I am super focused I don't read through them...
but if I feel like I am not concentrating and just typing I will type a few paragraphs and then re-read them...but not fully re-listen to the dictation.
The first 8 years I did this it was SUPER BUSY, only the last 2 has it been slow. nm
x
We have the ability to see each others # of reports and # of lines. We are to report to super
visor when one person has done 150 exams a day but only has a minimum of lines typed. In radiology, it tends to average out. They are watching it for morale's sake as well as they figure if the MT who jumps jobs is probably cheating elsewhere in the job or her/his life. Too many ethical ones these days to settle for a cherrypickers.
Publix stores are starting to look like Super Wal-Marts! Have you seen that?

Homemade super nachos with a huge garden salad.
Ugh, I just spent hours in the hot sun picking peas, lettuce, beans, onions, and zucchini.  Now we have to eat it all. 
super told me to meet lines of 12000 or be dropped to SE
i thought there was only 2 types of employees; statutory or full time
Well, work is super busy..so not much time..no harm no foul..sm
Working 14 hours a day puts a cramp into watching the news lately, so have not seen much, nor had much time to really think about it. Did the donation through both of our work, caught a bit of news...but I cannot help anymore by sitting in front of a television, so a bit slow on the news intake here.
OMG! Admin really outdid it with this counting software. Thank you SOOO much! It's really super.

No, not at all. Brand new Super Center, nice area. But have never seen the stickers.
 x
Can anyone suggest a super light touch keyboard? That you can't hear the typing?
I am looking for one that you can't hear the typing.  TIA
Should just post all their open positions in one post and only be allowed to post one of those a day
nm
Here's my thoughts....sm

While I feel empathy for her family wondering what happened and wanting closure, frankly I'm tired of hearing about the case on the news, and that we have tied up FBI and even the military resources to look for her.  We have people that go missing in the US every day... and people visiting countries disappear - and you only hear about the ones who have families that are rich or well connected with the media. 


In my town there's a college girl who has been missing for over a week and it finally made the newspaper in a small blurb today.  This girl missed a flight to visit her family for a vacation and hasn't been seen or heard from since then, and her family says this isn't like her and that she was excited about the vacation.  Are they getting the attention this chick in Aruba is getting?  No.... because they're an average middle classed family.


Some thoughts on that...

I do know how you feel.  There are a few things I've done to cut that type of sress down...


I'm not sure what your company is like, but for mine, we have a primary account, and many people also have secondaries (mine is so busy that I don't usually need back-up work, so I have one major account).  It pulls from several clinics, but with a pool of about 20 or 30 dictators, after awhile, you get the hang of even the hardest ones.  There are some dictators that are just really bad, and I struggle with.  When I can't figure something out, rather than spending 10 hours searching and struggling, I use blanks.  I give it a good faith effort, as best as I can, and then I move on.  Since I usually clip along at a good pace and am pretty confident in 99% of the work I do, I don't let myself feel bad for sending something to an editor, if I truly don't know what it is.  Of course, I do the research, but if I'm looking for something for more than a few minutes, it's been too long.


You may need to look for a different account/specialty or even a new company, if you think that is the problem.  I know that, at one point, I ended up moving from a difficult but high-paying account to an account that paid less, but I was more comfortable with.  I ended up making more with the lower-paying account, because I wasn't having to stop every 2 seconds, and I wasn't tearing my hair out, and ending up in tears at the end of the day.  Of course, people should move up as they feel ready for that, but perhaps you need a workload that doesn't create so much extra work for you.


Those are just some thoughts, but you CAN do it.  Be proactive in finding a situation that works for you.  You are more of an asset to your job when you are comfortable and not stressing and struggling.


Hang in there!


but here are my thoughts
If your son cried, the coach tried something with him.  Why didn't anyone press charges or have the coach fired?  You don't let pedophiles coach kids.
My thoughts
For obvious reasons, I hope it is not true. But it kind of makes sense. I was working on Monday the 5th and was transcribing work from the 2nd, when within an hour, the work was 100% gone! Perhaps they routed all the work from Amherst to Ohio and then offered them unbelievable incentives to get it done. Not sure if that is what they did or not. All I know is the work was gone awfully quick and it has yet to return.
My thoughts
Direct deposit is definitely the way to go! Never a worry when and if the mailman is coming today!
I second your thoughts
Aren't these people that CONSTANTLY complain so darn frustrating? I am right here with you that MQ is a good place to work. Well, better get back to work - LOTS OF WORK THIS MORNING - YIPPEEE!!!!!!
My thoughts exactly
Great minds think alike, and I agree with you 100%!!!!!

Well said!
My thoughts-LM

  


 I would want to know what type of docs run the clinic - whether anesthesiologists, physiatrists, ortho, neurology, etc, as this will guide the typical direction of the dictation.   Because pain med Rx writing is always under scrutiny, there will probably be a fair amount of repetition for every pt on medicolegal issues.  Most, but not all, of my experience is with neuro/physiatry-based pain management.   For both these, I found the doc more likely to do further workup, which leads to much longer and involved reports. In the middle would be those docs who do extensive review of the patient's history and only minimal further testing.   The extreme other side of the coin are those, what I call, in/out pain clinics where the pt shows up every 30 days, re-signs their drug contract, has their BP checked and leaves with a new Rx.   I would always expect the initial H/P to be extensive and the f/u notes relatively brief.  Typically lots of phone call documentation and referral/followup letters or information.   Anesthesiologists lean more toward a lot of injectable therapies, blocks, epidurals, etc., at least initially, putting more of an op bent on their practices. 


As far as interesting, pain patients are very repetitive in their complaints and their needs.  Typically,  by the time a pt gets to a pain management practice, the cause of their pain has already been extensively worked up.  There are true chronic pain sufferers and those who are drug-seeking only.  Things do get interesting with the latter because they are very creative when it comes to trying to con or manipulate the docs.   If I were in your shoes, my first question would be what speciality of docs run the clinic.  As far as job security, it is way up there for legit practices.  More often than not, the average family doc is not willing to prescribe pain meds beyond a certain amount of time/quantity and feel forced to refer the pt to a pain  management practice in order to protect themselves from the medicolegal aspects of the business.    Hope something here helps - best of luck to you. 


My thoughts
I have worked for the same company for six years and my best friend also works for the same company but has different accounts. It seems that things seem to go in waves and becomes either feast or famine and seems to be this way for both of us at pretty much at the same time so I wonder if it is just kind of natural for things to go up and down. This time of year seems to slow down for me and I have come to think it is because of Christmas, seems maybe people aren't wanting to go to the doctor and have the bill due to Christmas coming up. I don't think there is some conspiracy or things are being shipped out of the country, I think it's just the natural flow of things, at least for myself and my accounts. After the new year things always pick back up for me and have for the last six years.  
My thoughts
What exactly is difficult about it?  The IC's charging a fair line rate.  The doctors use a lot of macros to save time and because if they're like most doctors, they hate dictating, and they get to see more patients so get to charge the insurance companies more plus collect co-pays.  I just don't see anything difficult about it.  
My thoughts .....
I think EVERY new driver should have a nice Rambler for their first car, then a Pacer .... it'll make 'em appreciate anything more LOLOLOL
my thoughts
your m-i-law's 'not telling you the whole story' in my book is akin to lying -- at the very least, deceit. Maybe it wasn't her place to tell you, but she could have insisted her son did (or else she would). For her to keep in touch with this other woman is inappropriate in my book, unless she is scheming to put her back in the picture. Of course you have the right to feel angry and betrayed. You always have the right to feel what you feel. i'd be sorely inclined to put some geographic distance (a lot of it) between you/hubby and her. i'd be civil, but never feel i could trust her under these circumstances.
I'm so sorry. Here are my thoughts.
I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. I can't say I know how you feel because my parents are still alive but I can say I'm so sorry. I think a death of a parent is something you NEVER get over, you just learn to live with it. I think if you feel the need to cry every day, then cry every day. But also, try to think about the good things....the things you learned from him...the things you did together. I bet your dad would not want you to feel this down over his death. He would want you to remember the happy times and focus on the future. Take each day at a time. You are only six months into the griefing process so I would think it is completely normal to shed a tear over your beloved father. He sounded like a great dad and he thought the world of you. Hang in there. You're going to make it through this.