Home     Contact Us    
Main Board Job Seeker's Board Job Wanted Board Resume Bank Company Board Word Help Medquist New MTs Classifieds Offshore Concerns VR/Speech Recognition Tech Help Coding/Medical Billing
Gab Board Politics Comedy Stop Health Issues
ADVERTISEMENT




Serving Over 20,000 US Medical Transcriptionists

You can't be a decent MT without the right schooling! I don't care what you say.

Posted By: Ms. Wilson on 2005-08-09
In Reply to: Well, we can all rest now that Sandy will take care of MT education! - Amy




Complete Discussion Below: marks the location of current message within thread

    The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
    To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu


    Other related messages found in our database

    All I want for Christmas is a decent job, a decent job, a decent job.

    One that's not 95% ESLs, steady workload, steady accounts, good communication, office staff who aren't rude buckpassers, decent line rate, no offshoring, direct deposit, flexible schedule, not having to do 50+ 30-second reports per day, and a platform conducive to speed.  I know it's not possible, but a girl can dream, can't she?  This is, after all, my Christmas wish list.  I never get what I want for Christmas.  Why is that too much to ask for?  It doesn't even matter anyways.  After Christmas, I QUIT MT!!!!  Burger King is just down the street, and they give food discounts.


    One year and you make decent money? What is decent money to you?
    k
    what schooling

    Been at this since late 1970s.


    Schooling
    How do you tell someone who is looking at schools that they should only go with the top 3?  I learned the hardway and I am enrolled in M-Tec currently.  I am sure you can get jobs from other schools but I personally would like the opportunity for the job placement. 
    Schooling for MT
    Can you recommend the best online school for becoming an MT?
    I don't think schooling has anything to do with it.
    I had on-the-job training many years ago and I have no problem getting jobs. It's how much you know, not the schooling. If you have only been transcribing a few specialties or can do acute care but not OPs, cardiology, etc, it might limit you as to jobs.
    Home Schooling!!!

    I am currently home schooling my son via the interent. I am not sure who loves it more him or me. He is a link to the main school page if you like to look into it.


    http://www.childu.com/



    Home schooling

    I home school my son via the interent and it is great!!! He still has friends. School is not the only way to make friends there is church, sports, etc. My son has been diagnosed Ped. Bipolar and is a very, very smart child and the school stystem was only holding him back.


    Home schooling is not for every child, but it has been working out GREAT for my child


    Home Schooling
    I have one daughter in college studying to be a teacher. I have one daghter who home schools her 6 and 9 y/o. The 6 y/o is in the first grade. He reads on a 3rd grade level. The 9 y/o reads and does math on an 8th grade level. They both play soccer and basketball, dance classes, swimming, library days. It takes discipline on YOUR part to make a routine. Her county has a very large home schooling network. They take field trips. This may not seem like much to any of you, but my daughter was a "C" student, more interested in makeup and Vanderbilt jeans, clothes, boys, etc., etc. She was made to wear designer diapers. I was very skeptical when I found out the plan, but no longer. I am amazed at what the home schoolers are doing. My great-grandson is also 6 and does NOT even know his alphabet and is just now learning how to print his name. He does not know his address or phone #. Colleges are actively recruiting home schoolers because they make better students, fit into college life better, and get along better in the college atmosphere. Check out your local home school organization - they can get you started on planning for next year. You'll have plenty of help and good luck.
    what difference in schooling for PA's?
    vs. MD's?  What can they NOT do?
    Home Schooling
    I have 7 grandchildren, all my daughter's, and she's home schooled all of them.  The oldest will have her Masters soon.  The next 3 oldest are in college.  The next 2 are at home with mom, and the youngest is in private school.  He has Down syndrome.  I'm so proud of all of them. They're doing great, and it's primarily because of home schooling.
    I agree on schooling
    If you don't go with the top 3 you are likely to not find a job. That is something a lot of people find out too late, unfortunately.

    I'm a Career Step graduate and had my job within 24 hours. I couldn't have done that without quality training.
    You were not stunted in your schooling, were you?
    Again, if you do not understand, maybe taking a brush up course would give you some assistance in what the poster meant, was trying to do. This is why so many people are upset about this and you, as well, do not have any scruples because you are out to get any and all that you can regardless of the next person. You have no thought for your peers. Shame on you, also.
    About 670 first day, no schooling, no training, no

    expander.  That was gross line though. 


    Home Schooling Via the internet

    That is what I love about home schooling my son via the internet. We have an office here in town and they have 2 days a week where you can bring your child in if they need help or just to be able to work around and meet the other kids in the area. Here is the link to our local chapter and below that is the link to the main company.


    http://www.aceva.org/about.html


    http://www.childu.com/


     


    Home schooling issue

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10028966/


    So much for the benefits of home-schooling and keeping your kids away from those bad, bad kids who attend regular school!



    OK, I respect you home schooling, but when my
    daughter was in high school, a very good school, most of the teachers had advanced degrees from excellent universities. Her chemistry teacher had a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. How many parents have those kinds of credentials?

    Oh, by the way, it was a public school.
    Experience means more than schooling... sm
    I took typing in high school, became a nurse, dabbled in MT for a doc, and have now been an MT off and on for 30 years, steadily for the last 10. No one ever asked me if I went to an MT school. I took the acute care, basic 4 tests and passed. It is what you know and where your have worked that matters. Maybe you need help with your resume to present yourself in the best possible light.
    Check out my post above about schooling and what I think is happening. sm
    Like I said, newbies cannot do VR effectively. They just don't have the experience. They need to do about 5,000 clinic and/or acute care MTs with extensive notes, books, the ability to do their own research via google, etc., in order to do VR.
    I give them information for schooling and this website
    and I never hear anything else from them again. I guess once they figure out how much work is involved, they change their mind. I agree that most people think it is a job where we sit here and do nothing. Most of us can make good money, but it is a lot harder than most people think.
    No problem with the anger the OP showed towards home-schooling?
    I didn't spew venom, only pointed out the obvious, kids are kids are kids. Anybody who thinks that people home-school their children to keep them away from "bad kids" is greatly mistaken. The minority may be for that reason. The majority have real reasons for their conviction to home-school.

    Some people choose to home-school because their kids are the bad kids. Some people are forced into home-schooling bad kids by the public schools who can't handle them. It does happen, I've personally witnessed a friend being put through exactly that.

    But, thanks for pointing out my venom (it was not intended as such) and thanks for the prayers.


    Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I also believe their country pays for their schooling too. sm
    I am not sure about their residencies, whether they do them in the US or their own country, but I have also heard it is very easy and very short period to become a doctor in another countries. It scares me more about them not knowing what to do if they have very little training compared to ours. I would flat out refuse to have a foreign doctor work on me!! To the lay Americans though, they cannot understand medical language period so I think they don't understand anyway whether it is English or another language.
    YES, it's true, funding for schooling to replace outsourced jobs...sm
    my husband is a machinist (was a machinist) in Illinois where manufacturing took a hard hit. They sent home a piece of paper with his pink slip about getting funding for schooling if the company was identified as having lost jobs due to overseas outsourcing. His company was too small to qualify but I went on the list and found many companies in the Chicago area that qualified. I even posted the info on the boards here about six months ago.
    Kinship care versus foster care/adoption
    Having been placed in a position where I now have custody of my 3 YO granddaughter and going through the legal system, I sought an online network of relative caregivers for children. I would encourage you, especially since you are in Georgia, that if you take any children into foster care with the idea of adopting them, there is federal law that requires the state to take certain actions in a specific time frame. When a child is removed from it's bio parent(s), the state is required to investigate any possible relatives who can take the child before foster care is considered, but even before that, reunification with the parents is the priority. Once a child enters the system and is in the system for 15 out of any 22 months, the state is required to find permanent placement for the child.

    The problem with this is that there are case workers who may favor a foster family and do not seek out relative care. I have a good friend in Georgia who had to fight all the way to the state level to get custody of her grandson after the child was placed from the hospital into a foster care home with the promise that the foster parents would be allowed to adopt. She has now adopted her grandson, but it was a long, hard battle to get the state to admit their own interests were placed above those of the child and/or family.

    If you get a child placed through the state, please make certain there is not a relative who wants that child before you get your hopes up. The courts are now favoring return of children to relatives even after a child has spent years with a foster family who hoped to adopt them.

    States get bonus federal funds by complying with the time lines and being able to close the case, so some states place children in foster care because it is easier than trying to locate relatives.

    Didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but I can't imagine my sweet bella going to someone outside her family.
    If it was a clinic, it might have been urgent care, but it was NOT acute care. sm
    Acute care refers to work in an acute care setting, a hospital, doing at least History and Physicals, Discharge Summaries, Consultations, Surgery notes, Emergency Department notes, and much more, including GI procedures, Cardiology procedures, Neurological procedures, Pulmonary Function Studies.  It goes on and on and it means and acute care hospital setting, not a clinic.
    I always figure if they don't care about their dictation, they probably don't care about their
    nm
    Dont care how many languages you took. Care
    x
    Decent MT job
    Good luck in finding one any more. I have checked on several and they are all as bad as or even worse than MQ. That's why for the time being, I am staying with them. Everybody wants us to work for peanuts nowadays, thinks we can just jump from one account to another with 100% QA, understanding totally strange doctors who don't speak English, etc. The people in charge don't have a clue just how difficult this job really is. I wish I could retire!
    I was responding actually to DECENT MT
    ...rather than EXCELLENT MT.

    :)

    Nice attide, though.

    I don't know companies that charge 18 to 20 CPL!!! The most I've heard of is 13. Who charges 18-20 CPL, please? And who are they sleeping with??? :)

    I lie... I forgot that in mentioning sleeping with..... There was a surgical group whose director's wife started a service and charged her husband and his partners 18 CPL.

    They now offshore to India, however.
    Where is there a decent company???
    I would like to know exactly WHERE to apply to a decent company that is not the same as or worse than MQ? I have checked into several and they all leave a lot to be desired. I have lots of experience, have 99% QA reports, and would like to be paid for it. I have not found anybody who is willing to pay me any more than I am making at MQ, plus they have a lot of rules about strict schedules, etc. that were a lot worse than MQ. I would love to quit MQ, but where is there a better place???? Let's hear some POSITIVE answers for a change----.
    How does asking someone which companies are decent

    equate into having them do your resume and work for you?  That's a stretch.  Word of mouth is all we have here because the people doing the hiring are naturally going to make their company sound like the best one out there.


    Personally, I am sick and tired of searching for a decent MT job.  I've been looking for over month now with no luck.  It's not for lack of experience or effort.  I'm not unqualified or a lousy worker either.  I get really tired of being put on the most difficult accounts right off the bat or being bounced from one account to another for coverage.  I want a decent platform that doesn't require you to jump to four different places just to find the header demographics information.  Time is money.  It's gotten to the point that I don't even know what I want any more.  Everyone wants full-time, odd shifts, Tu-Sa, or a C-phone.  I've seriously been thinking about going back to selling stuff on ebay because I'm so frustrated.  I give up.


    That would be the decent thing to do
    deleting posts where it is mentioned. It seems very juvenile and shady for them to just delete the posts without any sort of response.  If you take a stance on something, you should be willing to truly stand behind your decision.  They are acting like they are ashamed of the position they have decided to take on this matter.
    That's a decent salary.
    .
    Then, I would say 9 cpl to 10 cpl would be a decent offer.
    Go for it! 
    Decent money is out there
    Most of you know me from this board and I just want to share this with you guys.  One of my gals that I met through a nephew's baseball team -- he and her son played together and we go to the same church.  She had two terms  of medical terminology/some transcription underneath her belt, many years in the law field as a paralegal, etc.   She wanted to work at home, make some extra money, etc.  I took her in and started her on my psych accounts and the onto some IM accounts.  She got the psych accounts quite well but had trouble with the IM.  We butted heads several times over scheduling, etc.  She did not understand the 24 TAT and so on.  But we perservered together.  She finally got a job in an attorney's office part-time doing some medical review, etc. and quit me.   On good terms.  Then last November I helped her land a GYN account that we started off together and I just handed off to her as it was not worth my while to drive 25 miles for what dictation was there.   It was my business name and years in experience that landed the job.  She took it over and tonight she informed me that she is so glad that I kept at her and perservered with her as she is now making $42 to $45 an hour typing for them.  She is like me charges only .12 cpl but because of auto corrects, macro's and shortcuts that I helped her with, she is making good money.  If fact in Sept when they add another doctor she is going to quit her legal job completely because she makes more with this account with less hours or if she keeps the legal job she is going to do what I did and mentor and help someone else break into the field.  Again these are tape accounts, with pick up and delivery and the little accounts no one else wants but they provide us with a good living. Again, I don't look at the cpl but at my hourly rate and that is what keeps me happpy.  She just wanted to thank me for helping her out and I am really happy for her.   Yea we spoil our accounts but they reciprocate with decent money.  So for those that want your own accounts, keep at it, takes time and patience but you can get there.  I had most profitable year ever this year and less hours. 
    decent money
    Better than I would make at a 40 hour week clerical job in my area. Much better. I don't have benefits, but I don't need them because my husband has great benefits with his job. I DO get quarterly bonuses though that are more than my yearly bonus at my previous office job. No, I won't get rich doing this. And yes, I put in a lot of hours. I work hard. I research. I have invested in good reference materials. And I love my job.
    What exactly do you consider *decent* money, (sm)
    and what part of the country do you live/work in? What's "decent" pay in rural Kentucky or Iowa is food-stamp time in Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego or New York, just to name a few.
    in bed, and have a husband with a decent job
    .
    No decent MTs just excuse to keep pay low. Pay
    c
    I had some decent Americans,
    some decent nurses, and then started getting probably the worst dictator on my account. Is 15 blanks a problem? :o}


    Is a decent MT job too much to ask for these days!?!?!?

    is it too much to ask for a decent job as an MT anymore?  i am so fed up with the big services and how they take you for granted, ignore your requests for help, clunky, time-consuming, line-stealing platforms that i could just scream! (please excuse my lack of punctuation and any type-o's, this is a forum and i just really don't care right now!!!)


    i am so sick of sitting at my computer all day long to only get out 500 lines a day and it's not my lack of committment, lack of focus, or any of the like....it's the out-dated, stupid "platforms" we are expected to type in and now they are even setting it up where we're typing in little boxes and not hitting return to go from section to section, i'm sure in an effort to reduce payable characters. 


    I am just at my wits end.  i have been applying for jobs that are not in the field of MT for the last two years and cannot get any replies to jobs besides "work at home" scams and the like. 


    ANYONE ELSE FEEL ME OUT THERE????


    Try 80% ESL with the other 20% on ASR; any decent doctor is on ASR at 1/2 the pay....nm
    xxxx
    What are you talking about when you say decent?
    Would be hard to say, according to what you are used to making. What have you come up with in your calculations?
    It's pretty decent

    Especially if your account is a tough one with ESLs, etc.  150 lph is nothing to sneeze at.  As to getting faster, it's all about your expanders.  If you have the same doctors at all, create templates as much as possible for them.  Save their phrases, etc.  If you type headings for reports, save the headings with the formatting, etc as a macro so you just have to hit one or two keys to bring it up.  If templates, don't work, then really concentrate on your regular typing expanders.  Any multi word phrase that you use more than once needs to have an Expander or an abbreviation.   Any word that is longer than four characters has an abbreviation for me - or at least I'm working towards that.   Really work on getting to the point where you don't type any word out in full.  That's the hard part.  Sometimes it seems like it's faster to just type and not figure out what the expansion is for that word, but it pays off in the long run.  The other thing that helps me is to put mistakes in that I routinely type, i.e., teh = the, taht = that.  I have found that doing that has made a huge difference - I'm not stopping to correct those automatically any more.  Pretty much any typo goes into the library with the correct word attached.


    You'll get there.  Good luck.


    Neither...just a lucky girl with a decent job for once...sm
    Have only been at this for about a year now and have found that most of these companies SUCK!!! They dont care about you, they use you and then get rid of you, and they are the rudest group of people I have ever been around...Not one of THEM are you???? Sounds like it.
    DECENT BENEFITS/PTO/HOLIDAYPAY
    what company are you with that you would get paid downtime, paid pto/vacation/holidays AND decent insurance, need to know that company's name please
    You are a decent woman, and that was well written.
    I do also think that the moderator needs to ban the person who has been so inflammatory here so many times, particularly on the subject of motherhood. There's no need for responses such as hers to be allowed when we all just want a forum to chat and, hopefully, be supportive to each other. I'm off to watch Lost now, my one great indulgence :)
    Why would any decent MT waste their time with MQ

    Don't be fooled by their latest spins. If it didn't benefit them, they wouldn't be doing it.   The only ones with a good deal at MQ are the suits. They should be eating some of the slop they feed MTs.


    How long to make decent $$$??

    This may seem like a stupid question to all of you "veterans" out there, but how long until a "newbie" can expect to make a decent wage in this business?  I have only been employed for about 5 mos, so I am trying to cut myself some slack, but minimum wage is hard to swallow.  I do reports from a pool of doctors so I can't seem to utilize the full benefits of expanders, and on my best day, I can type about 110-125 lph.  Again, I know I just started, but I can't keep making this kind of wage forever.  Are there tricks I am missing?  Any insight would really be appreciated!!  Thanks in advance!! 


    How many jobs do we take until we might be treated decent


    I am on my third in a year


    MediSpell is decent and only costs around
    It was about $10-$20 when I first got it, but I'm sure it's gone up since then. There's a free trial (or at least there was) and you can compare it to others. Not sure what Dorland's is like so I can't tell you comparison, but I've found MediSpell to be a decent medical spellchecker at a reasonable price for starting out. You can add to it, of course, too, but I don't think they ever issue updates like new drug names, tec. so you might want to invest in a more thorough one later on.