This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs.
The answer? Yes, they do. Although the prior experience will be a huge boost and will help the medical professional get through the first part of a course much quicker (terminology and learning how medical words are put together is usually the beginning of an MT course) they will still have a lot to learn. Spelling, for example. A nurse may say, “vesicourterine fold” but not have a clue of how to spell it. Is it “vasicourterine”? “Vesicuterine”? How about “vesiecourterhine”? I have known a couple of nurses fairly well, and none of them were good spellers. Perhaps I just met the wrong ones or something…
Not to mention that although the terminology and the drugs available are going to be easy for nurses, listening to doctors dictate this information is much, much different than what a nurse normally does, and will be difficult for the nurse to learn at first. I have read this over and over again in forums: I did really well in the first part of the course–breezed right through it–but when I had to start doing transcription, and understanding those doctors, I completely died. It took me a long time to develop my ear.” Developing your ear is an elusive goal that anyone who is doing any kind of transcription struggles with.
I remember an article I read in a magazine about this gal who could not understand what the doctor was saying. She knew it had something to do with the abdominal region of the body just based on the information around this word, but she could not understand the word itself. She had a coworker come over and listen to the word, and the coworker couldn’t understand it either. They called over a third coworker to listen to the tape. The third coworker listened, and then started laughing. She took her headphones off and handed them back to the transcriptionist.
“He said stomach,” and started laughing again as she walked off. The saddest part about this is that I remember doing stuff just like this when I was trying to transcribe. I would struggle mightily with a sentence, and finally put in some random guess that it really couldn’t be, but I had no clue what it could be. I would submit what I did, and then read the answer key. I would then relisten to the audio with the answer key in front of me, and nine times out of ten, I could hear what was being said just as clearly as could be. I would smack myself on the forehead for being too stupid to hear it the first time. But I was developing my ear, and primarily, an MT course is to do just that.
What school should you go to? In my next blog, I’ll tell you a bit of history on medical transcription schools and AAMT (American Association of Medical Transcription). Make sure to check back for that!