Medical Transcription

Looking at Bright Side

It is natural that everyone keeps cherishing high expectations before starting off in a career, but realizing them is not difficult for those who fulfill the criteria.

Quality (isn’t the word hackneyed?)

Accuracy, correctness, accurateness, exactness, exactitude, and precision--the buzzwords in medical transcription--all mean the same. The quality of a medical report is measured on a scale of 98-100%. It is no wonder that medical transcription is often likened to an artistic work. It equates to making a beautiful figure out of a raw material. It is not true that anybody seemingly speaking “fluent” English (often ungrammatical) can make a good transcriptionist.

What It Takes

You should have an excellent knowledge of grammar (not to forget punctuation), rich vocabulary, an eagle eye for detail, and flawless hearing. Good written English makes your job easy. Above all, absolute hard work and dedication is what smoothes the path to your career advancement.

The job will touch your life in every possible way. Without your knowledge, you will be disciplining yourself. You will see yourself trying to improve everything you do, either at workplace or outside of it.

Being on Our Own Initiative

Remember, training institutes instruct you in anatomy & physiology, pharmacology, the essentials of medical transcription, Americanisms and the differences between American English and British English, American lifestyle et cetera. They try to give you a good idea of what the job would be like and make you get close to it, but they cannot make you an expert within a training period of four to six months. Nobody can be tailor-made for the job.

It is your zeal, determination, and hard work that will make you over time a competent medical transcriptionist, or a medical language specialist, as you might say.

Srisaila Patil G.
Bangalore, India

I want novice transcriptionists to know what the profession asks for. I am uncompromising as far as the quality of a medical report is concerned. Doctors have never complained about the accuracy in our transcripts and in fact they are happy that we are doing it exceedingly well. Please make sure your doctor employs well-informed and dedicated transcriptionist, so that your care is safeguarded. I would like you to know that when a doctor's English is bad (sometimes miserably bad) and the transcriptionist is inexperienced, the quality of a patient's care is likely to get affected. Keeping in view many of my coworkers and friends who visit this site regularly, I posted this. I am sorry if it is deviating from the norm.

Srisaila Patil

Quality

Accuracy, correctness, accurateness, exactness, exactitude, and precision--[all] buzzwords in medical transcription--all mean the same. The quality of a medical report is measured on a scale of 98-100%.[You know my thoughts here] It is no wonder that medical transcription is often likened to an artistic work.[artistic work doens't have accuracy? It is "artistic"?] It equates to making a beautiful figure out of a raw material. It is not true that anybody seemingly speaking “fluent” English (often ungrammatical) can make a good transcriptionist.

Initiative

Remember, training institutes instruct you in anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, the essentials of medical transcription, Americanisms and the differences between American English and British English, American lifestyle et cetera [I hate "etc." when I see "etc", I know the other person has exhausted their knowledge. Maybe just mention the "key" points rather than all the points.]. They try to give you a good idea of what the job would be like and make you get close to it, but they cannot make you an expert within a training period of four to six months.[sounds a bit pompous to me. I would phrase in a positive rather than negative manner. Your training is your first step to a new and exciting career that will be rich and rewarding blah blah blah.] Nobody is tailor-made for the job.

It is your zeal, determination, and hard work that will make you over time a competent medical transcriptionist or equivalently a medical language specialist.


Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but there it is.

MountainHiker