Career Advancement in Medical Transcription

Medical Transcription: The Career

Medical transcription, one of the most popular home-based careers, refers to the transcription of dictations by doctors and other healthcare practitioners into ready to use text. These texts are usually patient records, letters and other correspondence material, as well as administrative reports.

In addition to home-based medical transcriptionists, these professionals also find employment in hospitals, offices of doctors and other healthcare practitioners, diagnostic centers, and business support firms that provide medical transcription services.

Duties and Responsibilities of Medical Transcriptionists (MTs):

• Listening to recorded dictations by physicians
• Typing out the entire recorded dictation into text
• Understanding medical jargon used in the dictations
• Using reference material to interpret clinical terminology
• Checking for inaccuracies and inconsistencies in a medical report
• Proof reading the text and correct any grammatical and/or spelling errors
• Converting the transcribed text into logical, clear, and reader-friendly reports
• Formatting the reports in standardized style and making sure they adhere to legal and ethical requirements.

How do Medical Transcriptionists Work?

Medical transcriptionists use a variety of devices to transcribe recorded dictations. The most traditional method of transcription involves the use of a mini cassette recorder.?? How this works is that the doctor dictates into a small handheld device, which records the dictation on micro cassettes. The MT then listens to the dictation on the recorder and transcribes it on to a word processor/personal computer.

However, since this method uses physical tapes that have to be either snail-mailed or couriered to the MT, it reduces the possibility of working with non-local clients.