If you are confident of your skills, testing
Posted By: should not be a problem. nm on 2008-02-11
In Reply to: Does anyone know of no test? - daffodilcornet
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I'm confident
I think it's ok, too. I pray. Nothing wrong with it.
that would scare me too but obviously mom is either confident in her sm
driving skills, doesn't care, or hasn't experienced a loss to make her stop and think. i on the other hand have a 14-1/2yo who i let drive around quite a bit (although i wouldn't let a little child like that in there) but i am very confident in her driving. i choose to let her drive now as i feel the more experience she gets with me, the more experience she will have when she is on her own and the more confident i will feel with her skills/reactions. i lost my sister when she was 21 to a drug in a car accident so i am very leary when it comes to young ones and driving. i think the laws should be 18 or maybe 21, LOL.
I'm 49, confident, learned this 18 years ago on the job, sm
still learning. Looking to get into another profession. Offshoring keeps our wages here low.
May I suggest a book I just bought and it works. Joyce Meyer's A Confident Woman. nm
nm
Regarding testing. I have given in-depth testing but I have come to find that sm
no matter what a company wants, be it ESL specialist, etc., the best test to give ANY applicant is one that is not planned, one given right on the spot, verbal, one that has not been scheduled so the person has had no time to get nervous, but throw about 15-20 questions at them, general knowledge for their level of skill, and it can tell you wonders about their knowledge that is retained!! I actually find that the retention rate of folks hired this way is actually higher than intense testing given by some of these larger national companies. We all know that it takes sometimes a couple of weeks for even the best MTs to understand (I am speaking of the ESLs or bad dictators). There are some companies that give these as tests and what does that tell? Tells nothing and means nothing! Some of these that do well on these actually cannot do the work. How do we know that these folks have not actually had someone else do the test for them?
I find the best way is to pull a pop test on the spot in the middle of the interview and it works! Don't ever give the same questions to two separate applicants. Have a database of questions to pull from. Score from the ones you ask and move on from there. If the person cannot do the work, you know it in a day.
I believe it was the old EDiX that used to give over the phone questions, but they still scheduled this and people had time to get nervous. This way there is no time and well, you would be surprised at what folks actually do know...and in some cases...what folks actually do not know when given multiple choice, but to me this is an excellent way of testing, takes very little time, which I personally consider to be too valuable to waste 3-4 hours on a test, which someone who is experienced and has worked for 10 to 15 years in the field should not be required to do anyhow, should not be asked to do. When you have worked 12 hours during that day for a company (and some have), why should they have to take 4 hours to do a test?!
Think about it!!
I have recently spoken to other recruiters from other companies and they have agreed with me on this and I hope it catches on because it certainly is less time consuming and tells you all you need to know without giving them the actual work to do.
people skills
I beg to differ. I agree with the OP - your post was rude and condescending. I see no evidence of people skills in anything you wrote or in the "tone" of your post.
Also, your reply had nothing to do with her post. She was sharing good news about a hiring phase going on right now. Too bad you are so miserable that you cannot even recognize when one human being is sharing good news with others.
From what I have seen and experienced with MTSOs in the last 2 years (28 years in this business), there are many owners, managers and supervisors with no clue about how to deal with their employees.
SO, maybe you are the one who needs to find another business.
Looking to upgrade skills, though sm
just for personal reasons, as I'm still working, etc. I see Medword has a 9 specialty CD set for $269, and of course there is the SUM Advanced package but that's $840. My goal is to be more employable by just broadening my skills as I've only been doing ER and clinic for years (going on 10); however, I'm certainly not made of money! ;) Do you think the Medword one would be okay or a waste of money? I've heard great things about the SUM program but do you think it's really necessary?
Thanks for your thoughts!
I hope your MT skills
This is where your skills really come into play.
It will drive you mad if you let it. Sometimes even the doctor is unfamiliar with the med especially specialists. I have found that on an occasional basis. 
$$ should have nothing to do with your skills and conscientiousness. (sm)
you sound like one of the ones who is relatively new to the field (within the last 10 years) who pumps out reports, doesn't spell correctly, and doesn't like being corrected. Am I right?
Gap in spelling skills, too.
I have noted that misspelled words are everywhere; spelling skills are apparently no longer valued (and I'm talking people with advanced degrees with atrocious spelling and grammar). I need to go to the dentist and get some teeth fixed from clenching my jaws so tightly whenever a doctor says things like "he itched himself".
not too sure of skills, need advice
Just wondering if any of you have experienced a lot of "knocks" starting out in transcription. I took an at-home course in 98 and finally got hired in 2000 and trained in office for 8 months. I worked at home for about 3 months then my husband divorced me. I continued to work in the medical field for the next 4 years, doing work in a hospital that included med term and typing with 98% accuracy or actual transcription. My problem is when I find a job my feedback is that I am leaving little words out, or not paying close enought attention to detail. What can I do to improve this? the only thing I can think of is just keep practicing but I can't keep an actual transcripton job long enough! What do I do? 
Looking to strengthen skills...
I have been in the field for 7 years with the same account (IM and Family Practice.) Looking to strengthen my skills. The areas I feel I need improvement in are grammer, proofing (something I have done very little of), and a stronger understanding of terminology. If you have any advice on where to go from here. I do not need a full transcription course, but does anyone offer a "refresher" and/or practice dictation in different specialties. Thanks so much!!
What if you were an LPN with not so hot typing skills?
Would that duty still be required of you? Sounds like you are not that busy as an LPN. Small office? This was not in your original job description? I would ask about a pay increase along with the duty increase.
thanks...just knowing there are others, same age bracket, skills, etc...does help...
like you, I LOVE this job, and actually chose it - not the other way around. Fortunately, it has not cost me anything, really, like the other poster mentioned; but I too am scared.
It is always upsetting when you life changes because of things out of your control...at our age, we are from the times when people had one job until they retired. I know that is history, but man, this way is ridiculous. Flying from job to job, no continuity, no structure. What good can come of this anyway.
like the other poster mentioned, who cares about us anyway, really. the rich only care about getting richer, and that crap about giving the tax cuts to the rich and they will 'share it' - what a bunch of fools we have been.
thanks for sharing!
Advice on expanding my skills..
If I want to specialize in Orthopedic or Cardiology or some other specialty, what is the best way to do this? I currently only do ER.
Would I have to enroll in an on-line school or can I just use practice tapes?
Any advice is appreciated!!
Need fast skills update
Need books/tapes to upgrade skills to do acute care work. Any advice on materials I can purchase. Going back to school is not an option right now.
Test your typing skills
http://www.arcadespot.net/play-1126.html
If your DD has previous skills she can post
resume on the on-line sites like monster.com. There are few jobs that are legit. If they require $$ upfront you can bet they are a scam.
A board to discuss how MT skills can
be transitioned into another line of work couldn't hurt. No matter how secure any job or profession appears to be, the situation can change at any time. That is the reality of the workplace with mergers, technology, etc.
One of the the worst career management errors is to become complacent. I can look back on seventeen years in this profession. It has changed, and not to our advantage. I can't predict the future, but it would be naive not to at least consider other options.
Just good parenting skills -nm
m
The people who hate QA are the ones with bad skills and cannot type for nothing!
Maybe these people should learn how to bring their scores up instead of thinking their mistakes are right!
Maybe if you spend more time honing your skills and
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She fears because of her own lack of transcription skills, sm
not because the ESL doctors do not give good patient care. If you are not up to the job of transcribing the reports, then you should not try to do it. But do not blame poor patient care on the ESL doctors.
Good research skills the best skill an MT
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Your account is too easy for your skills would be my thought.
For instance, you are making very good money easily while other MTs may be on a more difficult account and making less. You may one day be looked at as a person to move into another more challenging account to keep you in the curve of pay for MTs. That would be fair, actually, when you think about it.
failed skills test for national sm
Hi all. I have been an MT for 10 years and took a skills test for a national and FAILED.
Oh my goodness, talk about a slap in the face! All I know is they require 90% accuracy and apparently I failed that.
It has me questioning my skills at this point. PLEASE tell me others of you have had this problem!
Thanks
low level, low income, low education, low coping skills.
birds of a feather flock together FOR THE MOST PART. why don't rich people move to trailer parks? the mentality. why do low income people stay low income? no education. why no education? no forward thinking as to why some people can make money and others don't. sorry if you don't like it, but stats don't lie. do a google search. there are certain neighborhoods that have income levels, education levels, crime rates. these low income housing units, trailer park, section 8, apartments that do not require credit checks have higher crime rates, lower education levels and lower incomes. google will answer all your questions regarding stats. why do you think some neighborhoods are more valuable than others? where i live the same house could be in one neighborhood and be more valuable than a house sitting in another neighborhood that is zoned for trailer parks. why is that? go figure.
Absolutely! Wonderful hobby and your skills will only improve.
I started knitting, quit for a year when I got discouraged because I couldn't fix my mistakes easily, then went back, determined to learn the craft. For me, what was wonderful was when I automatically could recognize what was right and wrong, and fix it easily. Now, I have more yarn than I could ever use, and more projects started than I'll ever finish. It's a lifetime hobby. There'll never be enough yarn.
I started MT to gain skills to eventually work....sm
outside my home. I was working another small business from home too and had been home for 13 years total. My MT skills got me a job as a secretary for the Army. My first position didn't pay a lot, but it was still about $3.50 more an hour than I could find anywhere else locally. In August 2006, with promotions etc., I will have had total increases in salary of 45% in two years. My next move is to start taking some college courses (which my employer will pay for) and applying for positions with a more defined career field. Having a hard time figuring out which field, as I have a lot of options/opportunity.
Working from home served a huge purpose, but since DH is also self-employed, my current job adds a lot of security to our family in terms of health/life insurance, retirement, paid vacations, etc. I added up the cost of all my paid benefits vs. paying out of pocket as an independent contractor, and they were worth another 35 - 40% of my salary, which will increase once I start taking college classes.
If you are not looking in the medical field, gear your resume towards your other skills. MTs have a myriad of skills (research, computer, organizational, listening, following instructions, bookkeeping). If you are an independent contractor, you are more than an MT, you are a small business owner, which puts a host of additional skills on your plate. Get creative and look at some on-line resumes in different fields, you will probably be surprised how many skills you have.
When I decided to look for a job, I researched all the highest paying companies/opportunities within the distance I was willing to travel and only applied to those companies. It took about a year and a few interviews, but I eventually got exactly what I was looking for. I still get calls from some of the places I interviewed/applied offering jobs.
I think one reason MTs find it hard to have diverse skills (s/m)
is that for all these years we have been pigeonholed into just one specialty - typing medical reports. When I started MT at my organization, we had a variety of duties. Now we just sit and type. Interestingly, the few who got promotions within or out of the MT department were the ones who weren't too smart, and not very good MTs. The good MTs were kept where they were needed - doing transcription work only. And the smart ones are considered a threat to management, so they have no hope of ever advancing.
I've been to night school to try to broaden my computer skills, and the community college system is totally not on the cutting edge. Everytime I learned something useful, it became obsolete before we could ever implment it in our workplace.
I've looked into changing fields, and one of the big stumbling blocks is all the prerequisites for just about any field of study. Many of them involve the math & science classes I was steered away from due to my gender. (This was the 60s, remember... it was still legal to discriminate back then.) I looked into training as a veterinary technician, and working full-time and going to night school, getting all the classes in that I missed in high school was going to eat up about 4-5 years. It would probably take even longer to get into the vet-tech program. By the time I graduated, I would probably be in my early 70's. What veterinary hospital is going to want to hire a 70 year old newbie who will either retire or die before she's even learned the ropes at the new job?
Meanwhile, what ticks me off is that MT's are expected to have a very broad knowledge of English, medical terminology and computers, and be whiz-bang typists as well. And yet the same people that want speed, accuracy and experience, don't want to pay squat for it.
With your people skills, you'll stay unemployed. nm
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Dictators/Docs should be rated on their dictation skills!
I get so tired of hearing how hard everyone thinks it's up to the MT to keep trying to decipher poor dictation--that the CMT credential would actually help with that! I have a feeling most MTs probably wouldn't do better/worse if the had the CMT credential. I'm convinced most of us do just fine without a CMT credential if you could just understand many of the darned docs with their poor dictation techniques. How about if they were rated based on their dictation competency! Would it help if we could classify the ones that dictate with speeds like a runaway train, their poor sentence structure, ESL language incompetencies, slurring, mumbling, chewing, etc., so even a marginally competent MT could get the a document transcribed. That's where they should put the onus of responsibility for getting better quality work. My thoughts.
Sounds like a great way to use the skills you already have, but you have a real career with a future
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Would state you are a fast learner with good computer skills
and able to pick up things quickly once you are shown. Good luck!!
Valuable post, thanks. MT plus Skills Upgrade minus Complaining = Dollars. NM
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Yeah, we have no skills or intelligence whatsoever. We just fill in blanks! Geez! A monkey can le
Is that all you do, type? It's not all I do either. I have to know what I'm talking about, apparently you don't because you can just leave blanks!
My people skills are just fine. I just want to hire people who want to work.
I've not been ugly, I've asked questions, legitimate ones. Please tell me what is wrong with that. This site is not just for MTs, it is for QA Editors, Supervisors, Service Owners, there's even sections for Billers, Coders, and Nurses.
Testing for a new job
I am testing on Friday for a new job. I need this job very badly, because of the benefits. If anyone has any suggestions on where I can find some practice tests(written exams), please let me know! Thanks.
testing
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When testing, is it better to - sm
When testing for a company is it better to type verbatim or can you change things like grammar to make it actually correct?
Testing
I humbly say that I have never tested for a company where I have not been offered a job and I've tested plenty. I always type verbatim with the exception of changing grammar. If in doubt, I put (?), basically for anything I would send to QA if actually working. IMO if you start "correcting" you'll likely flunk the test. I've always tested for acute care so I have no idea what testing would be like for clinic work.
Not testing
Has anyone every been hired without being tested first? I was just asked to sign on with a company and start as soon as possible. I've already got ID# and everything. There was only one other company that did require testing but that fell through, could never get the information straight or help with it. Should I be leary of this one too?
not testing
I also was hired on this past week without testing. Like the other poster said it was a good feeling to have your experience do the talking... Good luck
Testing sm
Anyone know a good testing site from a good company who doesn't require buying expensive equipment just to "test", sick of reading those who say "If you don't have.......don't bother testing." I am probably on the wrong board, but I want to test today, if possible. I only have Execuscribe and earphones, am totally clueless otherwise. Have "Word" but no medical dictionary in there either. "Sad" but true. Thanks for any info. 
Pet testing
We once had an MD call our radiology office to see if we would MRI her beloved duck. Alas, the duck passed away before we could scan. I can only imagine what the report would have consisted of, LOL.
Testing
I tested with many companies without having to get *permission* to do so. The national I landed my job with right out of school said they required 2 years' experience, but I tested and passed, and they hired me. If you get discouraged and give up you will never get in. You have to keep plugging at it. I e-mailed my resume and applied and tested for many, many companies before I got hired. I actually started working for the company I am with now the day after I graduated my MT program. It really can be done. And you're right, it does seem to be a very impersonal business on many levels. Fortunately there are many companies out there that have very nice people that will give you a chance. It's just a matter of finding the one that is right for you.
testing
testing
testing
Hi,
yeah, just got done taking a test and nailed it, I know I did, but got an instant reply of not enough experience. I'm certainly not a quitter and will just keep trying. I am so ready to work!
testing
just testing my validation
testing
Can anyone out there explain to me why when taking a test for a national company they would tell you, Note: The audio is bad and that is part of the test. Why in the world would a company want to give you a bad audio tape to test on? Is this a Joke? I feel this is very humiliating to a transcriptionist. Just give a decent test. How is anyone supposed to pass it if the audio is bad? I do not care who you are and how many years experience, if the audio is bad, then no one is going to pass. This is totally ridiculous. I am glad I am starting to look into coding for a new profession because these National companies are making a mockery of this field, which was once respected.
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