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Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

Was nurses aid, then aide in ICU, then ward clerk, then

Posted By: clerk in ER, then they trained me on (sm) on 2006-03-26
In Reply to: Just wondering... - memt

MORE medical terms cuz halo the docs were professors, and they let me play PA under their supervision, then w/comp supervisor, then pregnant, then had to find a PMs job and landed in transcription dept as trainee. If I could meet their requirements, I stuck. If not, I was fired. I stuck.


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How about a home health aide or an aide for Hospice? Get paid weekly, too. nm
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aid/aide
nm
I was an aide at my daughter's school and I was no yuppie, but that was
aa
Hines Ward is the MVP nt
 .
When I speak of being in the psych ward
I only say that because this decision I need to make about what to do has been driving me crazy. All the "I should do this, and I should do thats" The What if this and What if that...My head is in a tailspin.
Unless patient is on locked ward, they are free to come and go.
Many patients go outside to smoke, etc. To keep patient in hospital against will requires a legal document signed by the doctor, called 5150 in California, probably something else in other states.
Sounds like candidate for mental ward
NM
Yep, a visit to a cancer ward makes just about any day-to-day problem seem
s
Other. June and Ward Cleaver with 2 well-behaved boys! I love my life... nm
nm
That's almost as bad as having nurses do it!
n
Transcription clerk.....
We don't have a "lead transcriptionist" at the hospital I type for.  There is transcription clerk who handles the reports coming in, getting them filed and such, but our pools are set up either by our supervisor or whatever particular work type needs to be worked on.  As an example, I get Preop H&P's, then H&P's, consults, discharges, ER notes and ops in that order.  Basically, if that pool is empty, it will bring up next report in your next assigned pool.  As I said earlier, you can interrupt a report ( on my C-phone it is 08) and you will get the next report, but then the one you interrupted will come up next.  The person in charge of the dictation would have to assign it out to someone else to keep you from getting it.  With a C-phone and the pools having been set up prior, you won't get a report that you should have to skip over.
way underpaid...you might as well be a clerk at 711...sm
Sorry to say and no offense to you personally, but any experienced MT accepting these wages is severely impacting this profession. If you owned a business, wouldn't you rather pay someone $8.50 an hour? This is disgraceful and an insult to any experienced MT. I have seen MTs work for this wage, but unfortunately 99% of them produce garbage, and then require someone paid at top wage to edit the report. EXPERIENCED MTs need to refuse these jobs, and let the companies hire someone who feels $8.50 an hour is a fair wage, and watch their clients drop like flies, or have an Editor fix everything. I've always said, there is no replacement for a multi-specialty experienced MT who works for a company and requires very little editing. You either know your stuff or you don't. If you know your stuff, you will make a profit for the company you work for. It's as simple as that. The companies who think that hiring ILPs and new MTs and paying them slave wages, will certainly be one of those companies that will not be in existent a few years down the road. Let's get real people!
MT Bashing by nurses

I found this on a nurse's blog - they were talking about MT mistakes they found in charts...


Nurse #1:
I tried to get a job as a medical Transcriptionist for extra money, and no one would hire me because my 15 years experience of direct patient care does not qualify me to be a transcriptionist. Oh really? Or, I guess I mean, Owe Reilly?


Nurse #2:


I have no idea why they wouldn't let you work as a transcriptionist - what sort of special training would you need that you wouldn't already have?! It might be a good way to make ends meet if there came a point where a nurse couldn't stand up for so long anymore. It doesn't seem like it would take much in the way of critical thinking skills...


We don't use critical thinking skills?  Darn, then maybe I should look into the career opportunities at Burger King...


 


The nurses do all that, except maybe the scalpels.
x
Thank God for some nurses who DO dictate...
for the docs who are horrible dictators. I do progress notes for an ICN nursery almost nightly. Thank GOD for those nurses. There are 2 docs right from the old country who can't string a sentence together in English though good docs they may be. We're talking 7-8 page very detailed reports on some of these babies. The other night, one of these gals dictated the first part, God love her, and actually handed the phone to the doc to give his 2 cents worth, awful dictator. Hey, the best thing some of these docs can do is let their PAC's do the dictating!!!
And Why?? Because nurses are presented
x
A girl who worked as a clerk in our

local hospital heard that I worked at home doing transcription.  She called and asked me a bunch of questions of how I got into this.  Of course, I answered all of her questions and added that if she was interested in doing transcription that she would need to go to our local community college and take some courses.  She said she didn't need to go to school because "all you do is type what the doctors say, right?"  To which I replied, "Yeah, that's all I do, just type what the doctor says," as a wave of disgust swept over me.  She came over to the house and sat down to type.  After about five words, with the deer in the headlights look on her face, she was astonished that "just type what the doctor says" is not all that easy!  It was worth all the time trying to explain what transcription really entails. 


Applied at a hospital for a clerk

20 years later, I'm an MT with three of my own accounts and IC for a company on-line.


I applied at the hospital and told them I had done transcription in high school for my medical secretary certificate, and the recruiter asked me if I'd like to work in Radiology as an MT.  I said I wasn't very good at it and she said it pays $2.00 more an hour, and I said "Well then, let me give it a whirl!"  I passed the typing test and have never looked back.  I built up my knowledge by working for 17 years in a hospital in different departments.  I went from Radiology to the Cath Lab to a diagnostics area. 


I loved the challenge.  The medical terms and stories interested me so much that I even wanted to be on the procedures so I could learn more.  So, yes I wore lead and went in as an observer.  If you ever want to gain experience, that is the best way!  Be right there for the show!  LOL


Update: I did not get that file clerk job
at the hospital.  They just called and said they choose another applicant.  They said they would like to keep my name on file in case they have another opening though.  Oh well, guess it wasn't meant to be.   It probably would not have paid much anyway. 
any previous nurses MTing now?

Hi there, I have been an MT for 4 1/2 years now, and I enjoy it for the most part, but I've really been thinking of finishing my BSN degree.  I had started college as a nursing major back in 1988, but dropped out after two years of completion of the prerequisite classes.  I have always had an interest in the medical field so MT'ing has been interesting, but I've really been wanting to finish up my nursing degree though, I have always regretted not finishing it.  Especially when I do the operative eports I really would like to be in the operating room working.  So, anyway, I have put my application in for the BSN program again and waiting to see if I get readmitted.  Are there are any former nurses out there who are MT'ing on this board, or perhaps any nurses doing MT'ing too who have any opinions?  Or are there any other fellow MT's going to nursing school on here and have any input about it?  If you are a previous nurse who is now a MT how come, and vice versa, if there are any MT's who are presently in nursing school please let me know how it is going for you. 


The very WORST MTs I have ever done QA for were nurses for 20 plus years!
Mind you, this was after they graduated from one of the *Big 3* schools to boot. I know most MTs can type circles around them. They were asleep at the wheel most of the time!
And just how many MTs transcribe NURSES' notes?
Nurses document about 2 sentences, so their work is amenable to point-and-click.

Physicians who typically scribble very short notes don't dictate anyway, so you're not losing anything by them using point-and-click.

The ones who dictate do so because their notes are too long to write. It's just about as annoying to point-and-click them in an EMR as it is to type them out by hand, so most physicians who value their time do not wish to waste it fooling with computers. At our facility, they continue to dictate.

Hospital dictation is not usually suitable for point-and-click. It's too long and some physicians are able to dictate at the speed of light, so they would lose too much time writing it themselves.

I'll share one reason some doctors do want to do it themselves: the quality of the transcribed reports they get back is so bad they can't stand it. They figure if it looks terrible and is crammed full of nonsense, they might as well do it themselves. At least, it'll make sense.


There are no dictators, physicians, nurses, PAs or the like
who don’t dictate on the VR I use, wish I did not have the crap dictators as you call them but they are not left out on my end. I really, really hate it now when I do get a straight report to type I am so happy with the VR I do. I think before long most big places will go that route, little ones not so much as I think VR costs quite a bit.
desk clerk at a low-budget hotel -
I called in sick with the flu, and that night the place was robbed at gunpoint.  I had never been so happy to be sick!
Try a search on Clerk of Courts website.
You might try searching on your Clerk of Courts website (if they have one). If he has been sued, it should be on there. If called as a witness probably not. Seems like if you are sued, though, or served to be a witness, they actually have a deputy come out and serve you in person. Could even be something like a parking ticket he didn't know he got. Let us know (if not real personal). Got me curious.
Often it is the clerk who types up and sends emails. nm
x
Hospital Unit Coordinator/Clerk
Anyone know what this kind of job would be like? One of the local hospitals has a few of these positions open in various departments. I'm wondering if it's a high pressure/low pay kind of thing, if only because they seem to be hiring from the outside. When I worked for a bank many years ago, they hired "outsiders" only for the crap jobs. I'm tired of MT and want to explore my options.
Then again you could end up w/one that nurses q2h like mine did! Lucky to get a shower in even. nm
s
The docs and nurses enter from keyboard themselves. sm
It is VERY irritating. They spend all their time looking at the keyboard and screen and not at you, the patient. Worse yet, when you go back the next time, you find they entered wrong information.
The clerk in the clearing area keyed the amount
and they can correct the mistake.  Banks use large clearing houses.  A clerk looks at the check and keys in the amount (it shows on the far right lower side on your check). They are human and they do make mistakes.  I had one key in a check for $40 as $400 years ago.  Bank was very apologetic and corrected and refunded everything.
I decided I did not want to be a file clerk for the rest of my life.....
I was hired in a 5 doc urology practice as a file clerk. And we all know that the file room is a toxic waste dump from people who have no idea what to do with whatever piece of paper they have. After working in the file room, the docs asked me if I would help out the other transcriptionist. (She was the only one at the time). Since I KNEW I wasn't cut out to be a file clerk, I said sure. So I filed part time, helped with transcription overload. We got a new peds urologist fresh from a Fellowship at Mayo Clinic so he was a really wordy type.

Long story short, he was so busy I was out of the file room for good, typing just for him as he saw lots of kids, and loving every minute of it. He moved to Arizona in the early 2000's, called me in 2006, and the rest, as they say, is history. He is still a peds urologist and I am still working for him. Everything is done over the Internet. No paper anywhere except what his office prints out.

He is one of the reasons I LOVE MY JOB.
nursing shortage includes nurses for instructors...sm
you can't teach nursing classes without nurses to teach the classes - that's part of the shortage and part of the reason why the shortage continues. Also more nurses are going for the bachelor's degree (4 years vs. 2 years) and that is extending the time before they are out in the work force.
remember when nurses wore the little hats...hahaha
nm
Do you think nurses and front office professionals look sloppy?
I don't like to go around looking "sloppy all day" either, but is it really practical to work comfortably in nylons and suit jackets when I am sitting and typing all day? No thanks -- I can't work well that way!

I refuse to wear sweats or jammies because I want my work to reflect my professionalism and I think the way I feel about myself reflects that -- hence, scrubs, which medical professionals wear. I am a medical professional and I don't think there is anything sloppy about wearing tasteful, professional, and comfortable scrubs.

Do you think that front office people, nurses, and doctors look "sloppy all day" by wearing scrubs?
In 1990, when I started as a MR clerk, SMOKING was allowed in Med Records...
can you imagine, and with all the charts laying around...it is so comical now to think of it...

That lasted until about 1992 I think...

That is not all that long ago really, to go from electric typewriters to smoking being practically outlawed...

they say MT will change more in the next few years, than it has in the last 100>>>>!
Scarry!!! Docs and nurses entering drugs and dosages into online charts. (sm)

Most of my docs cannot spell medical terms.  They can't pronounce or spell drugs.  The nurses are for the most part useless - no ARNP I ever asked could help me with a medical term.


I just spoke to my HMO.  They are now offering personal Online-charts showing


visits, tests, immunizations, etc. of what you personally had done.


I asked EXACTLY HOW DOES THIS INFO GET INTO THE SYSTEM, at what point?


The woman said:  It is input by the doc and the nurses.


I shuttered!


There goes the end of quality health care as we used to know it!


 


When the kids started school I wanted a job in my home town. A hospital clerk position (sm)
came open. You started compiling charts, making copies, etc. Then I was promoted after a few months and began learning transcription and did that part of the day. Then a few months later they taught me coding and abstracting and I did that part of the day. It was a great learning experience to learn things from the bottom up. Needless to say, I am an old dog here who has been doing this more than 25 years now.
When the kids started school I wanted a job in my home town. A hospital clerk position (sm)
came open. You started compiling charts, making copies, etc. Then I was promoted after a few months and began learning transcription and did that part of the day. Then a few months later they taught me coding and abstracting and I did that part of the day. It was a great learning experience to learn things from the bottom up. Needless to say, I am an old dog here who has been doing this more than 25 years now.