YOU ARE KING!
To be good at medical transcription, you must have a clear understanding about the roles of all involved players.
First of all, there's you. Forget the customer, YOU are King. Do not underestimate your powers. You have the power, for instance, to determine whether 52-year-old John Smith, the Caucasian male who came in for a hernia repair, leaves the hospital with name, age, gender, and race intact.....or if he even leaves, alive. He could be dead in YOUR hands before the doctor even gets to him. So, you, dear MT, are not just King - you're GOD.
Then, there's the doctor; more specifically, the BAD dictator. Bad doctors are an occupational hazard. Take them in your stride. Like everybody else who ever comes into your life, bad dictators too teach you something about yourself you didn't know....like, you're perfectly capable of having multiple homicidal ideations in a single 8-hour shift, but you don't act on them: You're great at resisting temptation ! You know a lot more adjectives than you think. You believe in prayer power. You can be really nasty and reject this report right now....ok, not that...so, moral of story: DO NOT Find Job.....job will find you (do not worry).
And THEN, there's the insurance company. If you want to worry, worry about these guys because if you miss the 'r' in John Smith's hernia, these wicked guys won't pay his "henia" bill which will ensure that you get ANOTHER dictation (by the SAME bad doctor) tomorrow (on the SAME patient) for a myocardial infarction - which is what John Smith will have when he takes a look at his "henia" bill - and please, you don't go and miss the 'r' again in his infarction.
Then, there's AAMT, the Boss - or BOS for short. Be mildly concerned about the AAMT. They will wake up every once in a while and tell you what hyphens to drop and what Romans to convert to Arabic (I'm talking about numerals, silly).
Contrary to what everyone will tell you, the patient should be the least of your concerns. I mean, c'mon, John Smith is not my rich uncle. Why should I care? Does he care that we get up at 4:30 a.m. to rush here and sit in front of our system and go to sleep while pop-ups fly around saying, "Link please", "where's the link?" "Link??", "LINK!!!!" and other such urgent messages? Not only does not NOT care, he lies there 10,000 miles away and offloads HIS problems on YOU. He's the most selfish player here, so please, just ignore him.
So now for Moral of Story: To be a good MT, the only thinkg that you need to be really concerned about is, when's your next weekly off.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST - with apologies of Oscar Wilde
First of all, if you haven't read "The Improtance of Being Ernest", do so immediately. It answers Shakespeare's eternal question "What's in a name?" and poses one of its own "What's not?"
Now, on to more pressing matters. Every single letter in a medical transcript is important. Sometimes, a wrong letter can can mean the difference between life and death. Here's an example: How many times do you type the word 'diet' in your report? And in how many combinations? Healthy diet, advanced diet, regular diet, clear liquid diet, pureed diet. Suppose you dropped the 't'?...or you substituted 'd' for it...wouldn't that make a huge difference? It may be one small 't' for you, but it's one giant leap (into the next world) for the patient. See what I mean about a life and death difference?
Healthy died - a technical impossibility.
Advanced died - second stage of death?
Regular died - I suppose we can live with this one (no pun).
Clear liquid died - death by drowning?
Pureed died - don't even go there.
If you're still not convinced, try this one for size. This example is not strictly medical though it might qualify under psychiatry: After months of American occupation of Iraq, President Bush recently said that they now that it was IRAN all along that had ties wtih Al-Qaeeda and not IRAQ. Wow! So now, there's a real possibility, like Jay Leno said, that "Bush bombed the wrong country because of a typo." So, take car when your tping.
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YOUR FAVOURITE DOCTORS
The Good Doctor: Starts with Hello or Good Morning. Says Please and Thank you a lot (“can you please change this? Thank you”, “can you please strike that out? Thank you”, “can you please cancel this dictation after typing 6 pages for half an hour? Sorry, thank you very much”). If he ever has to say ‘sternocleidomastoid muscle,’ he makes sure he spells it out. Ends with “Have a nice day.”
The Bad Doctor: Starts with a yawning Good Morning and ends with a yawning something-you-don’t-understand. In between, he sleeps. If he ever has to say ‘sternocleidomastoid muscle,’ he manages to make it sound like ‘Spiderman.’ Tries to help by spelling ‘muscle’…and spells it wrong.
The Ugly Doctor: Starts with a growl and warns you his reports are verbatim. There’s a slight problem with that: he doesn’t know grammar, and he misspells everything but keeps warning you not to meddle with his report. Dictates hair-raising drug dosages and lab values that could only fit an ape. “Just you try and change that,” he warns you.
The On-call Doctor: He’s covering for someone else and like all people who cover for someone else, he’d much rather be somewhere else. His favourite phrases are “I’m not sure,” and “I think, maybe”. Starts with “I’m Dr…uh…err…Dr…Dr…Dr…” he struggles to get his name out and you wonder if he could possibly have forgotten his own name.
The Confused Doctor: Starts with a cheerful “Good Morning” and then turns to someone and asks, “it IS morning, isn’t it?” Dates the visit in the 20th century and tells you midway that it’s the date of birth (giggles). Switches merrily between “he” and “she”, “left” and “right”, and “hand” and “foot” throughout. Turns to someone and asks (at the end), “Am I in the right place?”
The Whispering Doctor: He sits on a highway with 18-wheeler trucks roaring past and whispers. In addition, he sounds like someone is holding his head under water, and by the time you finish transcribing the report, you desperately wish you could have that honour. Says “Thank you” very loudly at the end.
Dr. Wren and Martin: Uses only one preposition, “in”; one verb, “are” and 3 genders, “he”, “she”, and “it.” Remarkably grammar-free and very very happy with himself.
So, have a nice day.
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IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU...
It did to me! What you're about to read is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Doctor: "Good Morning. I want to make a change to a report that I dictated in 1995. I don't have the report number and I can't remember the patient's name, obviously, (and I hope to God I'm in the right hospital), but I want to change Chief Complaint from "cat bite" to "monkey bite" and the part where I said "The patient tells me he sometimes feels very catty and has to resist the urge to lap up milk from a bowl", I want that changed to "The patient tells me he sometimes feels like a monkey and has to resist the urge to swing from trees." I want these corrections made on the original job. Find it. It must be SOMEWHERE. I repeat, DON'T SEND THIS AS AN ADDENDUM."
He practically yelled into my ears....and he sounded just like Al Capone. I was shaking like a leaf in a snowstorm. I don't know about you, but I scare very easily. This was a doctor. An American one. Probably Republican...and you know how dangerous THEY are. They're all unarmed and dangerous....except President Bush, of course, who's armed and dangerous. I sit at my workstation with a chief complaint of my own: Diaphoresis and atrial flutter. If I defy this doctor's orders, who knows, they could bomb Bangalore (they've certainly bombed other places for far sillier reasons.....like, being unable to find a reason) and I didn't want to be famous like that. And can you imagine what would happen to my US QA if they bombed us ? So I run up and down between floor one and floor four trying to find someone who knows what to do with this report. None of us are really sure, but I get plenty of opinions.
Opinion 1: Type everything verbatim and post it (and buy yourself a gun for protection).
Opinion 2: No!!! Are you nuts?? Put it in tech with a note "Veterinary Report".
Opinion 3: Do that only if you want to get sued; if you don't, delete the job.
Opinion 4: Delete it?!?! But isn't that a HIPPY violation?
Opinion 5: What is HIPPY violation?
Opinion 6 (my opinion): Open window. Jump.
Okay people, back to work...What? Oh, you want to know what I did with the report ? I rejected it. Now, turn off your autoselect and enjoy the remains of your day.
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