Maybe if you spend more time honing your skills and
Posted By: less time calling us liars, you'd make more mon on 2005-12-19
In Reply to: not true ..... - sandyGIRL
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Don't spend a lot of time initially trying to get
a blank. After you complete the dictation go back and relisten to see if you can fill in the blanks. When I get a new ESL dictator it sometimes takes me a while to get his accent so I don't spend a lot of time trying to fill in the blanks initially. Usually by the end of the report I have gotten the accent and can fill in most blanks. I also have the experience to know what the blank should be in most cases, and that also helps me fill in. If you get QA files back make copies of them and start your a notebook. If you have the ability to relisten to files after they have been signed off when you get QA back relisten to the dictation and see if you can hear the blanks then. When I first started doing ESLs I was so stressed because they were hard and I left a lot of blanks and I just don't normally leave blanks. After getting QA back and relistening it seemed so clear what they were saying and I couldn't believe I had struggled so much.
I spend more time out of my chair than in
nm
lol, don't blame you...I used to spend so much time
searching for sample reports, listening over and over, trying to make sense of some speedy English-speaking (incoherent, actually speaking half words and tripping over their words and stuttering because they go so fast) docs. This is a legal medical document, doc, treat it like one! And in my opinion, too many MTs and QA that try to interpret the gibberish often make more of a mess because you just can't be 100% sure in cases like these and better off leaving it blank so as to avoid the lawsuits. Don't ya think? ;)
So how much do you make for the time you spend
*Enquiring minds*, and all....
How much time are you willing to spend testing?
I'm not willing to spend more than 30 minutes or so testing for a company. I've seen a few that are well over an hour.
try to convince DH that now is not the time to spend...I think he's in denial...nm
nm
ADHD is bull. Just maybe try to spend some time
working with her (not pushing her but just introducing new things). I am sick to death of the ADD/ADHD diagnosis of kids. I do not believe in it. Some kids DO have a little harder time adjusting to school and again there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just talk to them every day, help them in any way you can but most importantly be there for them no matter what. It will all work itself out but DO NOT stress yourself out over what some teacher says. Most of the time they are wrong and can be proven wrong. I am a teacher, although I teach adults/teenagers in college and really..... I truly believe elementary teachers try to make it easier on themselves rather than try to work with a child that needs it.
Yeah I used to spend time carefully (sm)
crafting tactful feedback only to realize later that the MT had apparently not read it, deleted it, tossed it, whatever. You get to where you hear the same old excuses time and again and you realize that some people just don't care.
Another poster made the comment on how she didn't want someone to mother her; well, a lot of the MTs I worked with apparently did. They wanted me to be like a longsuffering mother and overlook their mistakes, take their excuses over and over and over again and offer tea and sympathy. They would repeatedly not write down what I told them, not look in reference books ("oh, I forgot you said to look there") ad nauseam.
So you get to the point where you're just sending to-the-point messages and you quit handholding. And then some people get angry because you're not "nice." Can't win for losing.
RAMS football, spend time with 10-mo old grandson
Yes, it is opening day for football in St. Louis, fall is right around the corner.
My grandson is at that handful stage, hard to get anything done with him around but I volunteered to babysit while his parents are out Saturday night. Hope to squeeze in a few hours Sat and Sun for work as well.
If you will spend some time reading the company board
you'll see that the industry is more volitile than ever. Work is being offshored to India and other countries and the garbage is left for the US MT. Companies are going to VR. Pay is low, you can expect to make 9 to 10 cpl average as an employee, maybe up to 11 cpl as an independent contractor. A lot of companies cannot provide steady work and insurance is very expensive.
I would not recommend leaving your job to pursue MT full-time. Most companies want the experience to be current, within the last 2 years, so you could potentially have some issues with being 3 years out.
I would suggest trying it part-time to get a feel for how things are before you decide.
Without starting a war, how much time is reasonable to spend on reasearch (sm)
when paid by the minute?
I have access to the patient's electronic chart and often use this as a tool to look up doctor names, diagnoses, etc. Often, these charts go back for years. Documents are both scanned into the patient's chart by the physician's office(a 5-page stress test would be 5 separate scanned entries) and typed directly into the patient's chart (a 5-page document would be 1 entry).
We are paid by the minute, no matter how fast or slow the doctor talks. So, if they manage to speed talk, not take a breath, and slur an entire H&P into a 1-minute report, we get paid for a minute's worth of work regardless of typing time.
Having given the above information, what would you consider a reasonable amount of time to spend on research,i.e., looking up "Dr. Smith" with no first name and no specialty or indication why the patient saw "Dr. Smith", or things of that nature.
(I've got my fingers crossed that this does NOT start any type of MT versus QA argument!!!)
Thanks.
CuriousMT
I personally will NOT spend too much time looking for a word. I listen 3-5 times if I still don'
it goes to the QA. I am getting paid 5-8cpl, depending upon the account, as an IC and don't have the time to spend too long looking. If I can't find something in 15 minutes I'm done. If I got paid more I might take more time to look, but at these line rates no WAY!
I also get no feedback from QA, or very rarely. We have one QA who is rude and puts down the MTs at every turn. It isn't easy for the MT either. If you aren't even listening to the dictation how do you even know WHY the MT didn't get the word, maybe the doctor is a total mush mouth and our ears are bleeding by the time we got to that word.
You're right, i spend way too much time on this board when should be working, I am just so burned
NM
I spend a good deal of time tweaking the ones in there so ummm, may give it a shot lol
dd
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
If you are confident of your skills, testing
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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!
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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I don't spend more than $25-30, regardless of who it is...sm
people should remember that it's the thought behind the gift, not the actual gift itself, that matters.
Can't help but wonder if he would rather spend...sm
time in jail in the US versus a Thailand prison. That's supposed to be pretty horrible as prisons go. Maybe he thought if he had to go to jail, he would confess to this knowing it would get him back in the states. I just hope they have more evidence on him than the confession. Surely, they do because they were apparently on to him before he confessed. It is pretty strange...
I'm not sure you really need to spend the $$ to do this.
You are a sole proprietor and can use your SSN as your TIN. You home office expenses as well as percentages of your utilities, vehicle, etc., are tax-deductible. You don't specify what your "other" interests, though.
Well, first of all I would *never* spend 20
minutes trying to decipher a 1-minute report *unless* they were paying me by the hour regardless of production. I don't like to leave blanks either, but you seem to be taking that to the extreme (of course your choice to do so).
I am not sure what the pay off is for you to stress yourself like this...
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!
I think of it this way - How much would you spend on dinner for you and
your spouse or significant other at a nice restaraunt? That is what your gift should be or a little more depending on if it is a family member. So, if you go to a very nice restaraunt and spend $70 for dinner for the two of you, including drinks, than the gift should be about that as they are providing you with a dinner at the wedding, right?
It may be off base, but that is how I figure it. If it is a family member, I usually will give $100 or more.
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