Cross the River and Learn How to Swim

As the famous song from the known band AMERICA says "Don't cross the river if you can't swim the tide". I am to believe that this notion is always the best thing to do in every situation where you are stuck to the point of having hesitations in doing something because you don't know how to get around it.

When I started working in MTC Academy Davao, I had this feeling of anxiety since I know I will be asked to do things which I was not exposed to in the past. Considering that my experiences in the past are mostly in the hardware implementations and setups, still I pursued and faced it. I only had little idea on how to setup a medical transcription training center, most especially a medical transcription production facility.

When I did the network hardware setup of the school, I did not have that much difficulty in doing it since most of the implementations on the hardware area I am quite familiar and also I was provided with training from the central office. The only thing that is challenging is the implementation of the student's learning systems which require tremendous configurations. It took me more than a month to familiarize myself to that system and make it run stable. I just kept on experimenting, testing, researching and asking other IT people from other branches. Unlike in the setup of the production facility which is more challenging to do and must be in compliance to a law, had completely I am way far from the beginning of it. The most gruesome thing is I had to do it alone.

The setup of the production facility took me sometime to finish and make it running since it's a very complicated thing to setup for me because I did not have prior idea on how to do it. One important thing that drives me in order to successfully complete the setup of the facility is my instinct. What I did was I just kept on reading related articles, researching on the internet, ITs asking other IT experts opinions, and kept on testing by trial and error. Finally I was able to make it run in a standardized way that is compliant to the binding law. The internet is a vast collection of knowledge where you can gain ideas in making things done. One important thing that drives me in order to successfully complete the setup of the facility is my instinct.

Jonathan O. Lobo

IT Assistant

What You Need to Know About Medical Transcription

About Transcription

Transcription is the conversion of a recorded voice source into a typewritten document such as the proceedings of a court hearing, corporate meeting, teleseminars, webinars, subtitling, data entry, and medical consultation. A transcriptionist is a person who performs such jobs.

About Medical Transcription

Confidential patient information is converted to a text document by a medical transcriptionist with the use of a computer. This text may be printed and hand placed in the patients’ record, archived, and/or retained only as an electronic medical record. Medical transcription can be performed in a hospital, via remote transmission to the hospital, or directly to the actual providers in off-site locations.

The report is used as the document which results from the medical transcription process, normally in reference to the healthcare professionals’ specific encounter with a patient on a specific date of service. This report is referred to by many as a "medical report". Each specific transcribed report, with its own specific date of service, is then merged and becomes part of the larger patient record commonly known as the patient's medical history.

A medical transcriptionist (MT) performs document typing and formatting functions according to an established criteria or format, transcribing the spoken word of the patient's care information into a typewritten, easily readable form. An MT is required to have knowledge of the spelling of all terms and words to be able to correct medical terminology or dictation errors. MTs also edit the transcribed documents, and return the completed documents in a timely fashion. All transcription reports must comply with medico-legal concerns, policies and procedures, and laws under patient confidentiality.

About the Medical Transcription Profession

An individual who performs medical transcription is known as a medical transcriptionist or an MT, or a medical transcriber. A medical transcriptionist is the person responsible for converting the patient's medical records into typewritten format rather than handwritten, the latter more prone to misinterpretation by other healthcare providers. In the late 1990s, medical transcriptionists were also given the title of Medical Language Specialists or Health Information Management (HIM) paraprofessionals.

Working in medical transcription leads to a mastery in medical terminology and editing, the ability to listen and type simultaneously, the utilization of playback controls on a foot pedal and the use of Expresscribe to play and adjust dictations while maintaining a steady rhythm of execution.

There is a great degree of internal debate about which training program best prepares an MT for industry work. It is always advised by different medical transcription company owners or employers that a knowledgeable MT is highly valued. Always look for a training institution that gives the best value for your money. MTs who can consistently and accurately transcribe multiple document work-types such as General Transcriptions, Legal Transcriptions and Medical Transcriptions, and return reports within a reasonable turnaround-time (TAT) are sought the most. TATs (turnaround time) set by the service provider or agreed to by the transcriptionist should be reasonable but consistent with the need to return the document to the patient's record in a timely manner.

About the Medical Transcription Process

When a patient visits a doctor, the doctor spends time with the patient discussing his medical problems, including past history and/or problems. The doctor performs a physical examination and may request various laboratory or diagnostic studies, will make a diagnosis, and then decides on a plan of treatment for the patient, which is discussed and explained to the patient, with instructions provided. After the patient leaves the office, the doctor uses a voice-recording device to record the information about the patient encounter. This information may be recorded into a hand-held digital recorder or a phone voice recorder, into a central server located in the hospital or transcription service office, and then the gatekeeper will distribute recorded files for the transcriptionist. This report, received as a voice file, is then accessed by a medical transcriptionist who then listens to the dictation and transcribes it into the required format for the medical record, and of which this medical record is considered a legal document. The transcribed files will now go into quality assurance by MT Editors and MT Proofreaders. The next time the patient visits the doctor, the doctor will call for the medical record or the patient's entire chart, which will contain all reports from previous encounters.

It is very important to have a properly formatted, edited, and reviewed medical transcription document. If a medical transcriptionist accidentally typed a wrong medication or a wrong diagnosis, the patient could be at risk if the doctor (or his designee) did not review the document for accuracy. Both the doctor and the medical transcriptionist play an important role to make sure the transcribed dictation is correct and accurate. The doctor should speak slowly and concisely, especially when dictating medications or details of diseases and conditions, and the medical transcriptionist must possess hearing acuity, medical knowledge, and good reading comprehension in addition to checking references when in doubt.

Transcriptions - What's in it for you?

What do you get with all the hard work once you've completed transcription training?

I got my first job as an Admin Assistant for a medical transcription school. At first, I didn't understand what someone would get from transcription training. But as days went on, and our of curiosity, I browsed the Internet and read some articles about it.

Although I have not yet finished my training in medical transcription (MT), I was able to get a part-time and home based job as a business transcriptionist. You might as me how I got a client. I was able to get the part-time job because if the people I knew. You might also ask me why I took MT Course and not Business Transcription Course (BT). The reason for that is because the medical transcription course has a higher competency. And the higher the competency, the greater the chance to land a job. And besides, the longer the training, the better for I would be able to familiarize the work in transcriptions and to familiarize the computer as well. And another thing is that, the more transcription practices with different slang and accents, the better.

My point here is that, during these times when there are too many graduates and few hiring positions available, the newly graduates are forced to leave another year unproductive because they can't seem to find a job.

The best assets that every aspiring transcriptionist should acquire are: 1) good English skills, 2) 50-60 words per minute speed in typing, 3) ability to listen very well with different slang and accents, 4) editing and proofreading skills, and 5) computer and Internet savvy.

I am not saying that everyone who has the skills is ready to become a transcriptionist. At first, I thought transcription jobs are easy to do. That was a wrong perception. Transcription is about learning the job and loving the job that you do. You can earn from doing transcription and you can also learn from the transcripts that you are doing. It only requires dedication, patience, and not more than a year and a half to study.

Virtues of an MT

To study medical transcription is to study a new language. That is why it is said that medical transcriptionists are also known as medical linguists. Yet learning the language of medicine is not what makes a full-pledged MT. So what makes an MT? For me, it is the core values which embodies each and every medical transcriptionists and these are:

Patience. There is an unending supply of patience required in every MT. From the first step of learning to be one, to the time allotted to finish the required voicefiles, to the undetermined hours spent to research just a single medical word, and not counting that of the editing and proofreading part, all of these require enormous amount of patience.

Humility. I think the virtue of humility will always be a part of every MT because one is constantly being trained and retrained by every new file they encounter. One never stops learning thus I guess each MT accepts the fact that “the road to a perfect file is still far beyond the horizon.”

Openness. Every voicefile done is expected to have a mistake or a blank or a grammatical error may have been overlooked, thus an MT may be criticized and corrected. All these are normal settings, a part of an MT’s day to day struggles. An MT is always open to change, open to criticism, and open to be corrected for the better.

Commitment. When an MT starts a new file, there begins the commitment. A commitment to finish it and to present is as perfect as it should be.

Learning to become an MT is one thing but becoming an MT is another.

Written by: Jeanette Lee-Nicolas MD

Study Tips for the Aspiring MT

The basic foundation of all learning is the development of a study habit. The habit of reading, understanding, researching, and listening is a result process of constancy. The medical transcription course similarly entails such a habit. Since an MT course is primarily the development of skills in listening, research, and typing; the knowledge of medicine makes the backbone for such a skill. Thus, here are some study tips for the aspiring MT:

1. Read and listen. I cannot overemphasize the importance of reading the topic of discussion prior to its lecture. In this way, you are able to prime your brain of what to expect and possibly get the answer to the questions you encountered while reading.
2. Application by usage. There is no better way to memorize anything than to frequently use it. In medical transcription, we are trained to be medical linguist. Therefore, any new knowledge of its language must be used in our day to day activities
3. Compile. The medical science is so vast. With the longest training of 9 months as an MT, one cannot expect to grasp the totality of that field. So whenever you encounter a new word (especially drug names), write it down in your notes. Take note of the pronunciation, spelling, and their usage. Compile all these and who knows, you might come up with a new thesaurus of your own?
4. Practice, practice and practice. Since medical transcription is a skill that we can develop, the only way one becomes good or even the best is to practice… practice typing, practice listening, and practice researching.

Written by: Jeanette Lee-Nicolas MD/Medical Transcriptionist