Medical transcription is the word that many of us could have come across many times or perhaps, not even heard about it at all. This article is usual for everyone, for some, the word medical transcription might be a surprising work or bitter pill to swallow because of the nature of its job, perhaps, sedentary, it basically involves lot of hard work and strenuous, and expectancy from the client is very high. Strictly speaking, only about 5 to 10% of the population in India know about this job. Frankly speaking, this job is very good and most suitable for people who have good knowledge in medicine and who can speak very good English. It is also suitable for people, especially girls, because they can work from home, at the comfort of their work station.
Now, coming to the point of defining the nature of job, there are two things that are involved, one is typing and one is transcription. Many of us get perplexed about both terms, everyone thinks, both are the same. There is, of course, a huge difference between typing and transcribing. TYPING is basically just typing the text into the system by listening or by seeing the text. TRANSCRIPTION on the other hand is not about typing, though it requires some skills of typing. An MT or medical transcriptionist needs to transcribe and not typing. An MT has to wear headphones and pay very close attention to what the doctor is saying. MT needs to decipher the accent of the doctor and create the text. There are certain number of skills that are required to do this job.
SKILLS:
Listening skills, paying very close attention to the voice.
One needs to get used to the voice and accent of the doctor. Many get bewildered about the voice and there is always tendency to hear the wrong words. There could be various reasons for this, it could be badly recorded audio file or it could be, an MT is new to the transcription field, or MT is not following the story line properly.
Need to avoid sound alikes, which regularly happen in this field.
logical skills/analytical skills.
Proficiency in English language. One needs to crosscheck with the spellings, and pay attention to different syllables. We need to understand English language keeps changing, the spellings are completely different compared to the past and even pronunciation.
passion for research
read the document like a story, it is a story of a patient.
It is obviously natural at some places in the text, MTs leave blanks and even proofers, because of the difficulty of the voice.
While doing research on specific topics, always use tips in Google, like inserting * or inverted commas, etc...
Always explore...
GLASS DOOR: Compared to other fields, in medical transcription field, it is very difficult to climb the ladder, that is from junior MT to senior MT, from Senior MT to junior Proofer, from Junior proofer to Senior Proofer, from proofer to QA...etc.. This happens because of the nature of its job. For example, one is promoted or has reached the ability of doing proofing, and yet, one gets stuck with difficult blanks and finds it very difficult to crack certain blanks. This is what i mean, by glass door. One hits the glass door and one realizes the limitations of his skills, but i have a solution for this, always, let your imagination fly like a bird, i believe, our mind, our imagination has no boundries. Simple technique is, always, as an MT or proofer, concentrate only 50% on voice and 50% on reading the story/text. If you can do this, i assure you, you can break the walls of glass and go beyond your imagination.
There are, of course, cons, in this field, however, one must look at the brighter side of the picture, which gives all of us a hope to sustainability. Most important thing is, LOVE your job. If one loves the job, one will be able to find great satisfaction. As per GITA, do not look for the results, just concentrate on your journey, and definitely, one will be able to reap good fruits through medical transcription job.
