Medical transcription is a highly demanding field, but it's also one of the best jobs to get into if you want to work from home. There are a lot of companies willing to work with home based transcriptionists who have the training and skills necessary to do the work without direct supervision.
The Primary Responsibilities of the Medical Transcriptionist
A medical transcriptionist takes the doctor's dictation and transcribes it into a written document. Most often these days this is done with dictation sent over a secure internet connection, and the transcribed report is sent back the same way.
Some transcriptionists work in doctor's offices or hospitals, but many have found it most convenient to deal with home based employees, often working for a service that takes care of hiring the transcriptionists and doing Quality Assurance checks on their work so that the doctors know their dictation is being accurately transcribed.
Accuracy is a major responsibility for a transcriptionist. Inaccurate reports can have a serious impact on patient care. It can lead to incorrect medications or dosages, incorrect diagnoses and other problems. This is why transcriptionists need to be so carefully trained. Mistakes can impact another person's life.
Finding Quality Training
When you decide you want to enter this field, you want quality training that will prepare you for work right away. The training program should have a good reputation with AHDI as well as with employers. Choose a good training program and you may not need to worry about the common requirement of two years experience that is the bane of so many newly trained transcriptionists.
Home based training is a good idea if you want to work at home when you graduate. It's good practice for what you're really going to be doing when you find a job.
Some programs are self paced while others have more of a schedule for you to keep. Either way however, you will probably need to finish within a particular time frame. Training programs aren't going to let you keep dawdling through them indefinitely. That's not the way to produce a quality graduate ready to work.
No matter how good the school is, you will only get the most out of training if you put real effort into it. This is the mistake some people make. They trust that the school will get them through it even though they aren't really trying. It doesn't work that way. If you want to be a good medical transcriptionist you need to work hard.
If you don't work hard in your training program you can suffer even once you find a job. Medical transcriptionists are generally paid on production, not hourly. If you don't know what you're doing well enough to transcribe reports quickly and accurately you are not going to earn a good wage.
Expect to take several months to a year or even a bit more to finish a training program, depending on the school you choose. There's a lot to learn, both in terms of skills and knowledge.
Author Resource:
Stephanie Foster runs http://www.medicaltranscriptionbasics.com/ for people who are interested in learning medical transcription. To learn more about the medical transcriptionist salary you might earn, visit her site.Distributed by ContentCrooner.com