Medical Transcription- My Job

I work from home and that always gets people asking me various questions about what I do. I am a medical transcriptionist. Here's the deal.....if you get sick and go to the doctor, hospital, have a procedure done, get an operation, anything having to deal with seeing a medical professional, there has to be a specific record kept of each encounter. A doctor might do this himself, but not usually. What usually happens, is a doctor will make a dictation- or a voice file- that goes into detail about the patient encounter. This is where I come in. I have access to these dictations through the wonderful Internet, and of course, my employer. I put on my super-cool head set, log onto the internet and my special work program, and begin to transcribe- or type- what the doctor says.

Sounds easy? Think again. It takes skill to be a medical transcriptionist (MT). We have to be able to spell and recognize medical terminology, laboratory values, and medications. Sometimes a doctor will misspeak and dictate a wrong word, or lab value or medication and we have to be able to catch that and flag it. It's hard! We have to keep a 99% accuracy, and if we don't, then it's trouble. If we want to make any money doing it, we also have to be not slow at it too. Honestly, it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. There are many pros and cons to my job, and I would like to list those.

Pros:
- I get to work from home! I don't have to use expensive gas to get to work, I just walk down the hall.
- I don't have to pay childcare. That gets expensive, especially when you have 4 kids like I do.
- The pay isn't bad, as long as you know what you are doing and are "not slow" at it.
- I have control over what my schedule is.
- It's easy to take off when I need to.
- I don't have to deal with office politics.
- If I want to go out of town, all I have to do is bring my laptop and I can take my work with me.

Cons:
- Sometimes being at home with 4 kids day in and day out starts to get to me. I need some ADULT time!
- It can get boring.
- I always have my work (computer) staring me in the face. It's always there, I can't leave it behind at the office.
- I get paid on production, so if I have an off week then that means my paycheck will be lower.
- More and more MT jobs are being ousurced to India.
- People who say "Hey, I can be an MT because I know how to type." That isn't true at all. Just because I know how to give my child Tylenol doesn't mean I can go to the hospital and be a nurse. It's a professional job just like any other.

So there it is. My list of pros and cons. I'm slowly going back to school though. :) Until then though, MT is what I'm doing. Some days are better than others!

Jen