helpful hints
Posted By: MQ'r on 2006-03-02
In Reply to: Any tips for a new nightshifter from experienced ones.. - Carly d
I've worked midnight to 4-5am for 13 yrs now. It takes a bit getting used to but make sure you take a nap before you start. If you plan to sleep after your shift, stop drinking any caffinated beverages 3 hrs before you end your shift. That was my downfall, drinking coffee during my shift then I was way too wide awake to sleep when I needed to. good luck!
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Some possible helpful hints. s/m
1. Never list your date of birth.
2. If not in your remume, add a section regarding programs you have worked on, what type of computer and operating system you have, what software you own, what medical references you have, etc., including little things such as Computer:, Pentium 4 processor, 2.00 GHz, with 512 MB of RAM. Makes you look tech savvy, and helps....
Training on Bayscribe - Any helpful hints?
Is there anything about Bayscribe you had to learn the hard way? Anything that will speed me up right off the bat? Thanks for your help.
Hints and tips ...
First, please do NOT even use the term FAILURE to identify yourself in anyway. NO ONE doing this job is a failure, period.
You state you do not use any normals or standards because everything MUST be typed from scratch. Is that "must" coming from your employer or because you don't see a way to do it with the changes you have to make?
I don't often have to use a long "normal" or "standard" such as an entire exam or review of systems, etc. I use word expanders, autocorrect, shorthand, etc., for individual words and phrases more than anything. Nest them. Examples of individual words: Use "ow" for "otherwise"; use "ht" for hematocrit; use "hps" for hepatosplenomegaly. When making your shortcuts, make sure you use what comes naturally. Then do phrases: "hpm" for "0.5% Marcaine" while "hpmx" is "half-percent Marcaine"; use "mzb" for "Metzenbaum scissors", etc.
My most productive times are when I am NOT using a large cut of canned text but literally 'skipping along' shortcutting phrases as they are dictated.
Operative note example: For the phrase "The patient was taken to the operating room and placed on the operating room table in the supine position." -- I have this in 3 separate shortcuts and type:
tptor and poort isup
The only "word" I typed was 'and'...the rest of that sentence was in shortcuts.
Don't jump in there and do them all at once. Try to do 5 to 10 (I would not recommend doing more than 10 a day) shortcuts a day. Write them down in a list and keep by your monitor until you can use them without referring to your list. Then do another 5 to 10 shortcuts.
I'm not boosting my line count in any fashion whatsoever. My accounts are verbatim accounts. If I had long spills of canned text, I'd spend all day editing that to fit verbatim. Instead, I use individual word and phrase shortcuts. The key is to name them so it comes naturally to you.
I do all my medications by starting the shortcut with a "k" because it is so unused and I can easily look at all the med shortcuts in the list. The meds I use most are vancomycin, gentamicin, Tylenol, and ibuprofen. For me, those are listed as kv, kgg, kt, and ki.
Use your autocorrect to capitalize acronyms. I type copd in lower case and have that entered into autocorrect so it automatically capitalizes it for me as COPD -- saves me the "struggle" of having to capitalize it. Then I add an "x" to the end to expand it out, so copdx is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Sometimes, if it is more natural, I double the last letter of the shortcut name for expanding it such as gbb for gallbladder.
Shortcut some of your punctuation, too: Using "ft," is "Following this," for the beginning of some sentences.
Design macros to carry out functions for yourself. I hate it when doctors number the first of a list and then there is never a 2nd item. Therefore, I NEVER number the first item even if it is dictated. Instead, I built a macro so that IF he goes on with "#2..." then I hit my macro and it goes back to the beginning of that line, numbers it, and returns to the end of the line, returns, and numbers for the 2nd item. I have a macro that goes back and changes the capitalized heading of "DIAGNOSIS" to "DIAGNOSES" for when there are more than 1 diagnoses listed.
Learn to use your search/replace features, etc.
???? Will any of this help ????
hints and tips
can you email me with how to make the macro for the numbers? That sounds wonderful (and helpful.... I hate it when they give a diagnosis, med, what ever, and THEN say 'next number"!!!!!) If you can I will give you my address, don't want to post it unless sure :)
Couple of hints.
ANYBODY assigning work to MTs is a bad idea. Whenever human intervention is introduced there is the potential for mischief and abuse. Even if the person who starts the practice of assigning work is an honest broker, there are no guarantees that that person will be there next week doing it. People often tend to exercise what power they have, big or small, to advance themselves and/or stifle their rivals/least favorites. Nothing beats letting the machine assign jobs, oldest first.
The following does not address the issue of MTs finding a way to reject jobs they don't like. Most of the systems I have worked on have disabled that capability.
It may be obvious that there are two basic methods of large-scale cherrypicking/assigning work: 1) Assigning all the good dictators to "somebody", leaving all the bad dictators for "somebody else"; or 2) assigning all the bad dictators to "somebody else", leaving all the good dictators for "somebody".
The main indicators of cherrypicking that I look for are large gaps between job numbers and/or dictation times that don't seem to fit.
Example: Last 3 job numbers were 13605, 13610, 13618, and 13630, and were all decent or a mix of good and bad dictators, but current job number is 14221 and it is a crummy dictator. Especially suspicious if more crummy dictations follow.
Another example: Dictation time of last 3 jobs indicates they were dictated on 1st shift but then suddenly you start getting dictation times from 3rd shift and the dictator(s) is pretty bad. What happened to 2nd shift's dictations?
Basically it's about irregularities in the pattern of jobs you get.
As you suggested, it may be that the in-house MTs get an incentive bonus or just don't like doing all those crummy dictators so they casually assign themselves the good work.
My experience is that MTSOs typically do not want to deal with "crummy dictator" issues. I've never known of one--or anybody else in the medical field for that matter--that has shown any willingness at all to try to help a crummy dictator improve his/her dictation skills or to find any other solution to this enormous problem.
thanks for the suggestions - will do your hints
thanks again so much. Time to add to the paper trail.
Google search hints...sm
This is an interesting video about techniques for Google searching IF anyone needs help.
I have had problems with buffering on some of these sites (buffering...a few words...buffering ... a few words). I usually wait until it goes to the end and then hit play and it will play all the way through. There may be someone on here that can tell us how to do this part better! Any suggestions welcome!
You may have to copy and paste this...don't know. Hope this helps some of you. It helped me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXHCcwS00bk&feature=related
how to file a health insurance complaint - any hints?
Background - I had to have radiation treatment for colon cancer and for the most part charged everything on my VISA. I have all the VISA receipts. Two office visits I wrote separate copay checks, which have cleared my bank. The billing company for the oncologist says I still owe $20 copayment which I absolutely positively refuse to pay. I have faxed to them a copy of all the VISA receipts and have spoken to the billing office and they have receipt of the two checks so they have receipts of all my visits/copays. My insurance company says I only owe a single copay per visit so if the billing company says they have received the copayments then I have fulfilled my contract. So who do I complain to? It's bad enough to have to go through radiation, but now I'm getting burned again (LOL - punny punny, gotta laugh) because of their inadequate billing system. Grrrrr. I am so incredibly mad I feel like, go ahead, turn me over to a collection agency and MAKE MY DAY!!!!! Anyone else go through this rigamarole/nightmare and who did you complain to? I want people's bottoms to get waxed on this - I have spent literally hours on the phone trying to clear it up, not to mention the cost of mailing/faxing/etc. Thanks in advance.
MS Word 2007 -- I have to switch over to this. Any hints, tips & tricks would be great. Thanks!
I've heard some people are not very happy with it. Any suggestions on how to get started, and any good tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help and expertise!
was that helpful? sm
what was the point in going off like that? She simply asked a question. It's been a long week, huh? 
Helpful QA
One of my QA people is very personable. She signs her name and adds helpful tips which have helped a lot. When I get snappy comments unsigned, I know its the other QA. Know your business. Don't overdo the punctuation. Concentrate on the medical report and its content. Nothing makes me madder than someone correcting what I know is right, especially if it is medical content that I know to be right. I've gotten QA back so picky that I didn't even want to start work on my shift because they were SOOOOO picky, example breast-feed changed to breast feed and ; where a , works as good, etc. and send examples if you know someone is gonna need them! Bottom line to me... friendly, patient and helpful.. IMO
Helpful
Just wanted to say, as a newbie, how wonderful this site is. It is really helpful and thanks to the person who gave me the tip on how to break into the entry level MT position. 
hopefully somewhat helpful
I work full time for a company in NJ, so I cannot answer as an MTSO. I live in Santa Clara, CA, which is in the South Bay and I notice ads for MTs will offer $19-$20 an hour whereas in the Sacramento area I have seen ads where they are only paying around $14.
This is VERY helpful!
This is also very interesting...Gives me a lot to think about! THANKS A MILLION!
You all have been so helpful!!
Thank you so much. I have learned a lot from all of you, and I have plenty of ideas to try out. I also got some great tips about the nickel allergy, which is wonderful as well. That one has been around for a long time.
I will be making an appointment to take him to see a dermatologist, but in the mean time, I will be trying out some of these things and see what happens.
THANKS TO YOU ALL
Very Helpful
I believe I was one of the ones you helped. Thank you very much for the general information you gave me. I really appreciate it.
Thanks to both of you. Very helpful. (nm)
(nm)
Thank you all! Very helpful. It seems there are sm
downsides to being paid by line and by minute. I am hoping I do better paid by the minute, only time will tell though.
What I think would be helpful is
taking some classes in terminology. Like I said, I thought it would be a breeze. Yeh, right. What kind of work are you going to be doing, all 4s or speciality group? How many doctors will you be working for. Sometimes, and I am sure other MTs will agree on this, your English speaking doctors are about as bad as your ESL physicians. How fast do you type? Working for an agency, they can throw you (perhaps) into a group of dictators different each day, the money dwindles if you don’t know them. What kind of training will you get with the agency? I was just saying it is a lot of money to invest in and it is not that easy. A lot of the people on this chat board talk about possibly finding something else to do. I also had terminology class but then having that and actually typing the reports are a whole lot different. I consider the operative notes the easiest by the way, they are my favorite but I also have to type other things as well. Do you have any experience with listing lab reports, x-ray, medication dosages- would you be able to question and look up if you thought a dictator said 500 mg of Ativan when maybe it should be 5 that was typed. You need some knowledge about a variety of things in transcribing because I, and probably others, have to meet a strict accountability for our work - mine is 98% accuracy, not just type and make the money.
Very helpful, thank you all very much....but.....
I need very wide margins for the header, but if I change the margins for the body of the letter, it also changes the header. How can you get separate margins for the header and the body of the letter?
Thanks again!
That's helpful, thank you...sm..
I didn't know the search key would pull up the desktop search. Did you know Microsoft has a free update for their desktop search function? It's nicer than the original, way faster with more features. Not as many features as some others but it's fast and you can pull it up with one click, even though it pulls up the whole program instead of just the document.
Thanks so much! VERY helpful!
Thanks for taking the time to post these. Looks they will be very helpful as I am just beginning to do some oncology transcription. Thanks again!
Thanks so much...most helpful
nm
This is so helpful
Thank you so much. There are so many here that I never would have thought of. I definitely recommend this list
this was helpful..thanks!
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Thanks to all! Very helpful!
x
Thank you ALL very much. VERY helpful! :-) NM
x
Of course, OP trying to be helpful but
x
That is quite helpful, thank you.
I was thinking a month or more, a week or two fits my budget mudh better.
Very helpful....
Thanks so much for responding. I am still a little nervous but will give it a try. It helps so much to know they will get my money back if the sell does not go well.
Thanks.:)
Well, that was helpful. NOT.
n
That's helpful to know. Thanks so much!! nm
x
thanks for being helpful
some people dont like to give leads to others for fear of having competition, so it is really nice of you to offer up these websites. I did a search for MT jobs and random sites will come up, and i NEVER know what is legit or not you know.
Thank you
thank you both, very helpful ;)
;)
This is very helpful...
Thank you again - I'm going to experiment with all of it. It's good to know there may be hope for me and those bills yet!! :o)
Thanks for the helpful info. sm
I've never had this problem before, so I'm uninformed. It happened last night, so I have to wait to see plastic surgeon Monday and talk to home office then as well.
Thanks.
Extremely helpful - thank you!!! nm
nm
You are so wonderful and helpful
I originally mailed my resumes. I was instructed to do this from the course I took. When I started online job searching I ran into websites with job boards and began e-mailing. I check alot of job boards on a daily basis.
That was intelligent AND helpful. Duh!
x
It's also helpful for another reason
If you have more than one item, you can offer the same thing to other bidders if you like, although if you have two listings available on the auction, you can't do this.
All of this information is so helpful!
.
You all have been SO helpful. Thank you for the responses! (sm)
I just needed to know if I was out of line or what, and you all have given me excellent feedback and suggestions. Thanks so much, I appreciate your time!
you can actually make some changes on your end that are helpful - sm
Go to start, programs, accessories - click on accessibility. You can set your computer for the visually impaired and make everythign larger, not just the font. I have found this very useful as my eyesight has gone from bad to poor over the years.
Thanks everyone! I will look into all of this information. Very helpful! nm
x
Thanks here too. It's helpful and interesting.
Thanks.
Thanks all - you've been very helpful
nm
Here's some helpful advice
1. Ask your state health insurance regulatory office to investigate why your insurance carrier did not pay more than they did for the medical bills. If you have problems finding out who that is, e-mail me and tell me what state you're in and I'll get that information for you.
2. Talk to your mortgage companies about working with you - often times they'll do this when there's a temporary hardship.
Good luck and remember to take care of yourself during this stressful time.
That was very helpful information
You sound like a really nice person. Take care.
me
That should be quite helpful! Good for you.
b
Here is a very helpful web site...
http://www.medilexicon.com
What are some helpful websites?
I have found some very helpful websites by browsing the boards here. Just wondering if some of you may have favorites you use.
My most helpful for finding bacteria is listed below.
http://www.dsmz.de/microorganisms/bacterial_nomenclature.php
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