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Yes, it gets so frustrating when trying to work

Posted By: NCMT on 2006-06-12
In Reply to: NC thunderstorms - same here

and having to shut down because of a storm. I recently started with a new company and had to explain the quirky weather around here so they wouldn't think I was just slacking off...lol. But, they are very understanding about it, but it drives me nuts!


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That must be so frustrating! sm

I've only purchased brand new units (around $200), but they only last a year or a little more for me.  I think they make the darned machines with too many plastic parts and they just don't last.


I don't think I'd trust buying a used one without some sort of guarantee.


Sorry - hope things get better!


very frustrating
I was not aware that the MQ levels were based on number of lines typed. The email I got differentiated the levels by work types.
its frustrating but all you can do is
report it to your mgmt. they have the power to stop it if they want to.
How frustrating is this?
   I have a NP who is dictating.  She calls the patient by his first name, calls him by his first part of hyphenated last name, calls him the last name of the hyphenated last name (i.e.  Mr. John Smith-Jones is sometimes John, somes Mr. Smith, sometimes Mr. Jones).  What a BIG pain for this verbatim account.  "uj" usually gives me the patient's name, now I can't use that because she keeps changing her mind what she wants to call him..................grrrrr.
it is frustrating
It's a little easier for me now because the kids are older, but what I try to do is get up early before everyone else and get a good 2-3 hours in. This works for me because I'm a morning person. If you're not, maybe you could work at night? I know it is tough - you just have to shut yourself in, close the door and become unavailable to the rest of the world !
I can see where it would be frustrating...

I am an MT who also takes frequent breaks to rest my hands and my back.  My daily production is pretty good, but my production per hour would not really impress anyone.


Perhaps you could suggest modifying the report to contain just daily production.  I do not see where productivity per hour or some of those other items are pertinent to anyone else because there are people who will shoot out anything to get a line count and there are those who are gifted at typing 100 wpm, neither of which I can/will do.


It is frustrating for sure...sm
I used to work in-house with a lady that was a cherrypicker. There was one hard dictator that she said "I can't do his and it takes me too much time." Well, it took the rest of us a lot of time and frustration also to do his, but we did it. She was allowed to get away with it because she was good friends with the supervisor. Needless to say, all the other MTs left (except her) and they couldn't find anyone to work there and stay, so now their transcription is sent out to be done. The cherrypicker is stuck there doing whatever anyone hands her to do now. Serves her right!
very frustrating.
I actually just put medical transcription in the search box and came up with 4 pages of videos all foreign. Yikes.
Oh that would be frustrating.

It's not just you. The job is especially frustrating
when the dictations are horrible. Let's see, today I've got speedy spit chick, the um um um um um um um um um um um chick, the old guy with gas who constantly loses his train of thought, and the two foreigners.
How frustrating
and sad. OT, but I would have loved the opportunity to get out of the Northeast cold!
It's very frustrating trying to access
This qualifies for the Stupid Business Decisions award.
It is very frustrating when your pay is determined

by your output and you can't produce with the dictators.  It does get easier and I can do them fairly well know, but I do some really, really bad ones - heavy accents, mumblers, can't pronounce words, etc. and even though I can get through them without any blanks it is VERY frustrating, especially when you have several of them at a time. 


Some of the dictators I have now I can fly through, but the first time I had them I was ready to quit because I left lots of blanks and I just don't leave blanks.  I can't believe I ever thought they were hard because they are so easy now.  You have to train your ears.  Give yourself a couple of weeks and if it doesn't get better ask for another account or start looking.  Every company is going to have some bad dictators, ESL or otherwise, but doing 10% and doing 90% is a big difference.


Good luck - hope it gets better.


It was very frustrating to learn but

after 3 months, I have grown to like it.... well maybe I have grown not to dislike it so much.  I would still rather work in MS Word.  It is NOT the best platform out there to be certain.  The spell check is awful and I copy everything into a Word document to double check.  You cannot copy back into Emdat though.  If there are any changes to make you must type them.  For some reason if you copy from Word, although it looks okay to you, on the physician's end it is wrong.


It is nice not to have to worry about the line count.  It is VERY nice not to have to save each patient separately.  It is nice to have the patients name available (although that is not always the case).  Overall, I give it a C. 


Hope this helped.


The same things happens to me...so frustrating

I have to manually right click and delete all of the extra smart lines.  I've had it to where I have so many smart lines that I only have a couple of inches at the top of my screen to type in.  It happens more some times than others.  It happens whether I'm working in straight Word or ExText Word. I find that if I log out of Word and back in, I can get it to stop happening for awhile, but that is so time consuming, especially if I'm logged in to ExText.  I've looked on all of the boards for a solution but haven't found one yet.   


This happened to me too - it was SO frustrating! SM
I found that I had a lot of Spyware on my computer that was bogging everything down, and that was causing my ShortHand to work VERY slowly. So when I typed out my abbreviations, it would print out the abbreviation followed a couple of beats later by the whole phrase, know what I mean? It was a huge problem. I ran Spybot (free) and it fixed the problem, but not before my production was drastically decreased and I ended up having to give up one account because the majority of the phrases I used on it were in my shorthand and I just couldn't keep up. Good luck, and I hope this helps!
Frustrating on both sides
You are absolutely correct about the hyphens - if the linked words form an adjective followed by a noun, they are hyphenated.  I know it's frustrating to have undereducated QA people, and as a QA person, it's equally frustrating to have people who absolutely never hyphenate, put a comma after every 2 words (or none at all), etc.  I really really hate when MTs start a sentence with "patient comes in......" when the doctor clearly states "THE patient....".....that drives me insane! I had a report the other night where I had to add "the" 27 times!  It's amazing how many people do not understand proper punctuation usage, adjectives, verbs, etc.  I certainly wish I had more like you who know where they go!
Truly Depressing!!! Frustrating!!!
I know I have posted before....thanks to all those that have given me leads.....but I am so depressed....have applied at too numerous-to-count companies....and STILL no MT job!!!!! Have some medical background besides my MT diploma, yet cannot get anywhere!!!! Even bought a foot pedal.....how is one supposed to get experience if no one will mentor them....and I have applied to all mentoring openings.....but no responses!!!! I JUST WANT TO CRY!!!! Seriously thinkiing that this was a big mistake.....wanted to further my career....but this hasn't helped!!!!  And unfortunately, I cannot afford to take another MT course......sorry to post again....I just needed to vent.....so miserable!!!!    Sneaser
Yes I tried it many times. This is so frustrating. nm
:
Yes, it is frustrating when trying to converse with people
who don't understand English.
Oh golly, that must be frustrating and annoying.
maybe you can make a game for yourself of second-guessing the QA folks. It sounds like they are the kind of ill-informed people who would rather cling to their ignorance like grim death than open their minds and learn something useful. If you look at figuring out their foibles as a game, maybe it won't rankle so much.
I would agree they are slow and frustrating
but once you have them down you can make great line counts on them.

As a side note, I have been doing ops daily for 10 years and I still use my Stedman Medical and Surgical Equipment word book often. If you are going to dive into ops you must, must, must get this book before starting. It will help you a lot.
How frustrating! Maybe you could offer to charge them half price, but
I would not let them get away with taking advantage of you. I know you need the job, but it's not fair for them to expect you to spend all that time (especially over a holiday weekend) and effort for nothing. Offering to only charge them half price at least gives you something for your time and also offers them a break. It was their mistake - not yours but halfing it with them will hopefully show them that they are willing to work with them on it but also let them know you're not a push-over that they can take advantage of.

Good luck!
I get my work from an FTP site that they load the work to, however I don't have pool work so to
speak, but I tell them how many minutes a day I want.  The work is generally put in my box by 5 pm every day, then I have until 10 am the following day for some priority work, or 3:30 pm for the rest, so TAT is not too bad. I would like to work less at night though, but I working on that. My downside is I do not get the same dictators day to day, there are a few I do on a semi-regular basis though, some generate great lines but take longer to do that other doc's and are not "money-makers", I also do not get paid for spaces so that hurts a bit too.  This is WP5.1 too.....so very antiquated but that is what the hospital uses, so not much choice there. But I understand what you mean about the C-phone. I was just doing another job with C-phone recently...they incidentally did not tell me how to get off of the system, which was very simple.  I'd finish a job, then hit stop and hangup if I wanted to get off or quit working.  That is what you need to do if you want to sleep, eat, etc.  Don't feel guilty, do what you signed up for, believe me they watch the pools and will get others to do the work you don't finish.  If they get on your case remind them that you are only PT and only want 500 lines a day, etc.  It's not worth killing yourself over.  Good Luck.
You go by your schedule and have no work. Everytime I get on to work, there is always work.
x
Then you would have no life at all except work, work, work if you did that. I wouldn't do it. nm
.
Same thing with nationals. You work all the time to keep the account caught up when others dont work
and then when they decide to put a whole lot of extra people on your accounts and run you out they could care less about how much you worked.
Have a hospital I work for and they consistently change work types and do line counts. (sm)
Management just doesn't understand in order to crank out the work you need to be proficient by typing the same accounts. Go figure, they just don't get it ??
Usually work "live" on a Cphone, while connected. There are ways to record & work off line, bu
s
steady work...gearing up to start new account....but there was no work on Tues as it was a holiday
Be patient with your eyes open....
I work for Warminster at MQ and I am sick to death of being jerked around with no work all the time.
I would like a job where I can depend on the work and it does not seem to be in this office of MQ.
Speaking of offshoring MT work, who does not directly send work offshore?
Just curious.  Has anyone got a list of companies who do not send work offshore?  Precyse?  MQ?  Spheris? 
Becky you work in a great place. With no one hovering, I bet you get a lot more work done w/o agoniz
wants what. The only people qualified to do QA on my reports are the dictating doctors and the rest is just pure waste of money and time. If I have a question fine. But this random QA bites and hurts everyone. BTW, I don't have random QA for those who seem to think I may have an ax to grind. No dog in this fight. Just common sense.
Good. Why dont you send some our way. What office do you work for so I can call and get your work.
:
Before needing to work, I did volunteer work through the Junior League where I am from in Texas. lm

Junior League was like a full-time job sometimes, but I loved it. Now that I have to work, even though it is from home, I still volunteer through my son's school.  I am a school teacher in my previous (pre-MT) life, so I volunteer my tutoring services for children who need the help beyond what the schools are able to provide but whose parents cannot afford to pay for private tutoring. I also know how you felt about being afraid.  I was strangely afraid before I joined the Junior League.  It was just the unknown. But I was SO blessed by being able to help.  Honestly, I am sure that it helped me just as much, if not more, than I helped others.  Go for it.  You won't be sorry.  (Just remember that you have to say NO when you have to say no, okay?  Remember that and you will be richly blessed by the experience!)


nm would you mind if I asked where you work and what type of work hosp, clinic ?
x
All I know is it caused the company I work for to be unable to do all work due today and the rest
:+
Just return the work, submit your bill, the scurry and find more work elsewhere. sm
They will never meet with you before next week. It is Thursday, already. Be prepared to sue for payment, because you will probably need to. But, most of all, find other work elsewhere, because I have a feeling this final payment will be a long time coming.
I work on Escription platform and the adapter didnt work for me. I tried it on my laptop though
and the foot pedal would just not play correctly with the adapter. I think others have tried it and done it but it just didnt work for me.
IC sets their own hours. As long as the work is done by the deadline, you decide when to work.

Glad I work somewhere where you cannot cherrypick....our work is divvied out by minutes and - sm

the office manager (who does not normally transcribe) dishes out the work, so some days are easy, others are a mix.  So no cherrypicking is possible.  You type up what is given to you, period.  She will alternate the tough one's out so no one person gets him/her all the time unless they want him/her and are used to that doc, or everyone gets a little piece, etc. There are days when I ask for easy work (tired, chemo day, Jen sick, or a lot going on, etc.) but not often, generally I get a mix but they all get easier the more you do them.  I am not working as much as I should be of course, every week is different here so I adjust my limited work schedule accordingly, so sometimes it hard to get better at certain docs.  I used to have a lot of blanks with the Trauma ER unit, but I have been doing that a lot lately and now and very good at it, still a time consuming account but at least I am improving. -----------------------  But I believe the OP was stating she did it to clear out the log, not to make more lines, and only when she was asked to do so.  At an old job I had #s meant everything, everyday we would get report (2=4 x a day) of the backlog, and emails pleading us to work, work, work.  The QA rules sucked  (MQ probably is basing their new plan loosly on this one), however we did not get penalized, just chewed out if you sent in too much work to QA (over 5%, and was 80% ESL), I would imagine eventually fired if you continued to do it. They were a great place to work for until they re-organized....it all went downhill from there.  This is why I prefer smaller MTSOs, it's not all about the #s, yes, they want production too but at least it's not so cut-throat. 


i used to work for a company that divided the work types up and i loved it. sm
there were only 4 of us working a major teaching hospital. someone was assigned surgery, different assigned discharges, different admits, etc. we all had the backup work type in case the original assignee wasn't available and were cross trained. it made us much more efficient, ability to get used to dictators, set macros, and in the long run we were all much happier.
Used to work in Cooperstown, NY - and on the way to work is a huge turkey farm
It made me never want to eat turkey again - seeing them all cramped up against the fence and cages, packed tightly, no room to move. Actually, it made me want to do some harm to the farmer who found this acceptable.
Do not work for Amherst if you can work for any other office in MQ. It is terrible. They overload
accounts terribly. We are always running out of work or need to have 8 or 9 backups to get lines in. This is the way it is. There may be a few out there that it is different but I do acute care and was just transferred there along with my office and everyone in my office is in the same boat. Not a good deal at all.
An MQ recruiter told me yesterday if work is low they "cut off" the work

SEs are doing it.  She also told me that it is written in MQ policies


that MQ can let go EMPLOYEES without notice (I'm not saying statutory employees here, I'm saying employees).


 


You're lucky they work for you. I've never gotten a refill to work right, ever.
x
Has anyone breast fed while trying to work at home, can you do this and still work full time?
It seems like the more literature I read on the subject, the longer it seems to take, especially in the beginning when you are breast feeding every two hours, or does it really just depend on the baby?
HAHA! Yes! I have those daily! But it's not really work as I work nights, it's little things l
turning on the pool filter in the morning and then in the afternoon running out there because I thought I forgot to turn it on. Or preheating the oven and then 5 minutes later saying "shoot! I forgot to preheat the oven!" It's really bad. And I'm only 31. I'm not 90!

I don't know if dementia or Alzheimer's runs in my family, but this could be a sign of something to come. Or as my husband says - you jut don't pay attention to much. He's probably right!
I work Sun.-Thurs. normally and will work on Fridays to get Sunday off if I need it. Works
s
The company I work for said cable phone wouldn't work, just FYI.
nm
Easy to work with. You can look up old reports. Your own word expander will work
s