OMG I did too!!! Remember the raunchy equipment and "blue belts". People these days should
Posted By: get to experience these, ha ha. on 2005-12-30
In Reply to: Started MT in 1972!! (sm) - CatNap
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I remember the belts. Dictation was clearer on those than sm
the cell phone and/or digital garbage available today.
Geeze, I remember the wax belts, and the red surgical book that was waxy, too! nm
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In the "old days" of dictation on vinyl belts, the quota was do to 15 minutes an hour. sm
To me, it seems realistic, but then again, each situation is different. On account I know, I can usually do 30 minutes an hour, although being money-oriented and paid by the line, I usually gauge things by lines. I do 250-300 lph, but those little dinky reports ARE an irritation -- no argument there -- hardly enter the header info and *poof* the dictation is over. Would be hard to make a decent line count that way.
But ... surely your employers understand there are variations on such things. Maybe you average 8.9 one month and 12 the next ... I would think it would even out.
Anyway, i'm into that gray zone where I know nothing about, but I wish you good luck. To me, in the days when I was supervisor, if I knew someone was doing the best they could do, that was all that mattered to me.
Just remember that it is not the people on this board who short changed their people and ONLY after
caught did they (after they were suied) make an effort to look good by sending out these checks. Now, think about this--had they done this many years ago when they short changed everyone, that would have been honest. Does it not bother you that only after they know they are under the gun that they are doing this to try and make themselves look good?
I used to work for MQ and I used to like what I did. I never can say I really liked the people that I worked with, but I really think they had some of the best accounts that I have ever come across in the MT industry. I loved working the major teaching hospitals that I did, but that certainly does not mean that I enjoyed being cheated out of pay.
So chill already. People have been cheated, were lied to, and only AFTER they got caught have they tried to return some of the money they robbed us of (as well as cheated their clients).
We all have reasons not to be happy with this company and you go off on us because we are complaining of things like small refund checks of a penny or a few cents or a few hundred dollars and NO WAY to even check to find out if this is correct?
I am sorry you are unhappy all of us thinking that there is still a dead rat in the cellar, but there is still a dead rat in the cellar and nothing will bring the dead rat back.
I would hold no love for a company that I know willingly cheated the very people who helped THEM make money out of their hard-earned money.
Go take a deep breath and think about that.
boy, do I remember those days
Make an appointment with your doctor asap and explain the situation. Ask for a Rx for Lindane Shampoo. It's more effective than the OTC products, which are also far more dangerous to use over a long period of time. If you are unable to have someone remove the nits, I would recommend using the product every 7-10 days for a couple of months, since that's how often the nits hatch, and within 7-10 days they'll be procreating all your head again.
It is imperative that you speak with the teachers in your child's classrooms and explain the situation to them. With the weather getting colder, coats are going to be thrown on each other and that's how the condition will spread, over and over again, from child to child. A letter also needs to be sent out to all parents about the problem. After that, you have to hope for the best. There's too often a "not my child" attitude which leads to noncompliance. It would take YEARS to finally eradicate the little monsters, despite the fact that you're doing everything you're supposed to do.
Trust me, I know. 
I remember those days
I graduated second in my class (Dean's List) in transcription and A&P. However, the real training was on the job. I had one doctor who was very ESL!!!!! I would work for ever on one of his reports, which would end up full of blanks, and I would only have transcribed a very few lines. He was very frustrating. I can remember one day going for a coffee break, coming back to work and sitting in the parking lot crying. I vowed I was not going back into the office, that I was quitting. Then I thought, my husband will absolutely kill me after spending so much money for schooling and training :-). I went back, and 18 years later I am still at it. It gets better!
I remember those days
They used to say you could make $80K/year tax free, but you had to live in a compound ...
I remember those days, too...
While it was a more casual and friendly environment between doctors and the HIM departments, I remember freezing up and getting so nervous when the doctor was standing there dictating live & watching (both about my speed and my accuracy). I only hope they knew I wasn't always that bad, hehe.
Does anyone remember only being allowed to gas up on odd or even days sm
back in the 70s, depending on what number your license plate ended in? brrrrrrr long, long lines
oh i remember the good ol days
I could never stand working with people a straight eight hours a day, i'm not an "on" type of person and not gossipy either. Just not my thing. A lot of backbiting went on and you could just feel the negativity in the air. At home I don't have that. My dog/cat never talk behind my back nor are they fake. They really and truly like me. Just kidding. But I remember those days well, couldnt get out fast enough.
I remember the days of refunds.. Now all we do is pay pay and more pay
Stinks to be us.
LOL @ both legs! I remember those days!
/
I remember in the old days when you were not hired without
at least 3 to 5 hears working in house - no in house on the job experience? - not considered.
Oh my gosh - I remember those days. sm
I started working at home 18 years ago when my son was born. I would have him in my office with me. He liked the bouncy walker back then. He would sit in it for about an hour bouncing up and down.
I would take him for a long walk and to the playground in the mid morning to tire him out. He would nap for a couple of hours in the afternoon and that's when I did some work. But, I have to tell you, I did most of my work at night when he went to bed. I had him on a strict schedule for napping, meals, bathing, and then bedtime.
Bedtime was 8 p.m. I started work at 8:30 p.m. and was done by 2 a.m. I managed 5-6 hours of sleep a night.
I lived on coffee and any other type of caffeine I could ingest. Not very healthy, but doable.
Back then, I had my own accounts, picking up and delivering tapes, etc. I took him along with me in the morning to deliver and pick up. It was very difficult, but somehow I managed.
It gets more difficult when they are more mobile, around ages 2 to 4. Then at age 5, they go to kindergarten, and you kinda get your work day back.
You know your child better than anyone. You sort of have to schedule your work day around him or her.
IC status worked for me in this situation. I don't think I could have done it as an "employee" type job with a strict work schedule.
Good luck ~ I hope this helped in some little way.
By the way, I still work evenings and night 18 years later, and I have daughter 16.
Hey, Brandi! I remember your stories about those days...
lol! Too funny. Yah, you Transquickers certainly did live on the wild side. I'm sure some still do!
Yeah, some days I do too, until I remember the typewriter.
Then I quit cussing my computer! lol
I remember this being in our local paper a few days ago nm
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Hah!!! I remember the days of 2000 lines!
Not with my company...A good day is 1600 lines. Horrible platform. Wish line count was better.
I remember back in my hospital days...
when we had the more personal contact aspect with the docs. The ones who cared could/would actually walk back to where we were and you could ask them questions, have them correct something, etc., or the MR director could tell the heavy ESL docs to enunciate their English better, ha-ha, which sometimes actually worked. Our county coroner would tell us some interesting stories late in the evening. One lady plastic surgeon loved what she did so much, if you asked her a question, she would draw you pictures of what she did. I once handed an awful resident doc my earphones so he could hear what he was dictating; he was so embarrassed he slowed down from then on, so it made a huge difference. For a few years, to get the docs to get their charts done faster, the MR director held a contast; the winning doc would get a free trip somewhere. You would not believe how some of these guys would compete for this prize, cracked us up.
Yeah, those days are gone, but I hope to live to see the work goes back to the local hospital level. A hospital system the next town over to me did post 5 full-time Transcriptionist jobs last fall; I applied, just wanted an interview. I never heard back so I don't know how this panned out. I think I'd apply to return to in-house work if that ever happened. The job was definitely more interesting then.
4 people just stole equipment?
Do you guys ever feel like just a number? Remember the good old days...
When if you had a problem, you could go straight to the manager and they'd take care of it right away, making you feel secure in your position and important? When I talk to my supervisor, I feel like her main focus is to get off the phone with me asap, being very short with me, and quick to say she will get right on something when in fact she never does. I just feel so remote and always worry about how long i'm going to have a job in the MT field because of how uncaring the supervisors are, not knowing us personally, not having a face to go along with the person, being able to yank us off an account we're comfortable with onto some ungodly thing where our line count goes down to zilch, and having NO control over it. I was never one to work around people because of all the backstabbing that goes on with women in the office, but I would love to have a home office to report to periodically throughout the year, and maybe work in-house a couple times a month, just to put a face with people and not feel like a number that would be easy to dispose of.
Yes! The "blue link" thing threw me, too,
Poster above explained the pulling number deal, but still not clear if that is for sure what it means. Oh well! Guess I'll just have to go buy myself something cool for MT Week. Master Card and Visa don't care if I'm a rocket scientist or not! :D
I'm not much help (I can't remember how) except to say lots of people know how SM
to do this. I've long since lost my cheat sheet. Sorry.
And it seems like more people are on here than ever these days.
With less back-biting. Would be a good time for jobs to post, considering perhaps things are actually getting better here.
people with that attitude of ungratefulness is why a lot don't get anything these days. sm
be thankful you got something. i have done the same as you for 2 MTSOs and get nothing. i thought it was the thought that counts right?
belts
Same here. Then went to IBM MTST (sort of like a computer. It was huge and had a desk of its own. I could not even use one now if it existed. To me, it went down when the big companies tried to take over more and more hospitals. When the small companies or individuals had it things were much better. Also they were on tapes. I used to drive up to 120 miles for one hospital to pick up overflow. Yes, I would love to go back! Even then you never knew when you would have work or some one would undercut you, but it was better.
LOL. Used those belts in 1978. sm
IBM Selectric III and everyone fighting over corrective tape. One PDR, Dorland's, and Sloane's Medical Word Book for the whole office. No such thing as school and a wide variety of medical terminology books.
I started in the 60s, before belts even. SM
We used wax records and had a press to smooth out the grooves and reuse them. The stat machine was down at the switchboard and we used to walk down and get our records a couple of times a day. We were using Royal typewriters, four carbons, all different colors with carbon paper and different colored liquid paper. We had two reference books, Dorlands and a red surgical book, which I still have somewhere.
I'd have loved tapes when I started...we used belts! nm
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Belts, then regular cassette tapes...
then mini, then micro...an IBM Selectric then magnetic cards, then magnetic tapes...those were the days! 
My first job out of high school, we had those belts. That was in 1964. Whoa!!
Vinyl belts. Thanks for the memory, Mine was legal, but all the same.
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I did legal transcription using the old vinyl belts. A LONG time ago. LOL
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30 hours divided by four days equals seven-hour days. Most of us have to work pretty much every day
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Working 6/hour days, 5 days/week I make
$42,000.00, but the work is there to make more if I want to. I'm in the southeast.
2000 low days, 4000 busy days
Did 43,000 lines last month. 6 doctors.
You can "make a living" if you work 16-hr days, 7 days
and if you rarely buy anything but food and the barest essentials in clothing. My balancing act is so precarious that all it'll take is one of life's little disasters (rent increase, sick pet, major car repair) to pull the rug out from under me. Not a good feeling at all.
if you live among trashy people, low income people, people w/o goals or direction,
content to just get by, you by default become a part of a group. "people" have decided to group trailer people as trash. that is because there are enough people in that group to earn the title and even if you aren't trash, you are categorized by others. did i think i was trash in lower class neighborhood surrounded by people who drank and fought all weekend? no but i knew i wasn't staying and did not try to pretend that all the fools in the neighborhood were just nice folks who ended up where they were because high horse snobs deemed their neighborhood low class. people for the most part live exactly where they belong because they don't want to educate themselves, they don't mind "trash" around them and they don't want to be bothered trying just a bit hard to extract themselves from that world. they justify everything to themselves i guess saying everyone who doesn't like their lifestyle is a snob and the comedians (Jeff Foxworthy/Chris Rock, etc) who make fun of them are just ill-informed.
As for me, I fought hard to get out and don't even want to look back. It amazes me people stay for generations.
550-650 lph on average. Some days more, some days less. It all depends. nm
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How? By working 12-hr days 7 days/week?
;LKJ
equipment
I have done some research and are willing to share if you want to E-mail me and maybe between the three of us we can figure this out as I have 3 different accounts that I want to switch over to digital. So E-mail me and we can share info.
Patti -- pjsword@aol.com
Equipment
We currently use the Audioworxs system and have it hosted by Gacela Group for our tech support. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions about the system. For more information you might check out the website at www.gacelagroup.com.
Equipment
My doc wanted to go digital so I had him purchase the equipment. If you purchase you are responsible for repairs and such.
IC DO pay for their own equipment, etc.
Poster doesn't say what the situation is but you're wrong to state that you don't pay for your tools to do work--I'm an IC and it's my responsibility to have what I need to do the work.
Example of EMR equipment - what do you think? sm
Does anyone have a doctor who is already using something like this: http://www.mdtablet.com/demo.asp
I have such mixed feelings about this (EMR). On one hand, I think the technology is awesome, and I think it makes so much of sense to have our medical info. available electronically (pretty much immediately) instead of a doctor having to request a hard copy and wait for it to be mailed or whatever (like when you change PCP doctors or go to a specialist or whatever).
On the other hand, is every doctor going to be running around with one of these handheld devices in his/her pocket, with all this medical info. on people? What if they lose it? How secure and accurate is the info. really? And of course I won't even go into the effect EMR will have on our jobs as MTs.
BTW, I saw this "MD Tablet" thing in the background when I was watching a story on Nightline. The story was about how the super rich in America are pretty much oblivious to the state of the economy, and still carry on with their usual lifestyle, spending money lavishly. No cutbacks for them to worry about. The one rich guy they were showing is involved in this MD Tablet product. Ever feel like, as MTs, we are sooo on the wrong side of things? LOL 
equipment
Because QAs often have a better equipment.
Not because they know more, they HEAR it better. But not all of them.
The core problem in this profession are crappy dictations and not maintaining their equipment by doctors.
Then why don't you just buy better equipment???nm
Regarding better equipment
Even without better equipment, often when they start listening to your blanks they will be plain as day.
If I have a blank toward the beginning of my report and go back to listen after finishing the report, I will many times understand it as well. There is something about hearing it out of context that makes it understandable.
This isn't always the case, (obviously sometimes it's just plain not understandable), but it happens more than you think.
Equipment
What companies provide equipment?
To all MTs, keep your equipment sm
current, same with software, keep up on today's transcription standards, don't end up like this person above who has stayed comfortable all these years and suddenly needs to find a job.
so many people was wishy-washy nowadays...love to see people make
a stand for what they believe in...
it is kind of wierd those statements have to be made in the first place but guess we are an ever-transitioning country and are still young. so many different beliefs yet not much tolerance.
I found your post respectful, and right on as to how you feel. it does not seem that difficult to sift through to read and respond to messages someone might not care for...
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