Medical Transcription Training – the Hard Way
My wife actually trained to be a medical transcriptionist by going through the school of hard knocks. In other words, her Medical Transcription Training consisted of about six months of intensive on the job MT training under the expert tutelage of her mother, who had started her own medical transcription business in Alaska and transported it down to the lower 48 (as she was fond of calling it). In those long ago days, there simply weren't a lot of great options to break into a career in Medical Transcription. Formal medical transcription training options mostly just did not exist. Oh you would find your occasional community college offering the standard courses in medical terminology and human anatomy, accompanied by a handful of canned dictation files. But this rudimentary medical transcription training experience no more prepared you for a serious career in medical transcription than most of the late night television infomercials that promised a two week crash course in veterinary medicine, home inspection, auto mechanics, or medical transcription.
Click here for our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
Click here for our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
Click here for our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
The reality is that most medical transcription training was conducted on the job through mentoring programs. Learning medical transcription on the job as she did made for a very difficult and stressful six months. We both went to bed every night asking ourselves whether medical transcription was a career that was worth the trouble. And inasmuch as medical transcriptionists are generally paid by the line (production based pay), that six months turned out to be a very challenging time for us financially. Her line counts were extremely low during the first 6 or 8 months of her medical transcription apprenticeship... and so were her paychecks.
As time went on, my wife’s medical transcription training began to pay benefits. She increased her medical transcription speed and improved her efficiency. Her overall production of medical transcription went up to the point that we both began to feel that life was good. So good in fact, that we sort of forgot where we had come from. This was especially true for me (since I was not the one who absorbed the lion’s share of the pain of those first lean months). Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I felt emboldened by her successful medical transcription training progress to the point that I went out and started trying to sell a few of our own medical accounts. I talked with hospitals, clinics, physician groups and just about anyone who would listen to my sales pitch. I sold them on the concept of using our “professional” medical transcription services. When I called my wife to relate the great news that I had sold my first medical transcription account, she seemed less than enthusiastic to learn that it was to begin that very evening. Well, to make a long and painful story short and sweet…We ground through that initial contract – barely sleeping for another month. We got some help from my wife’s mother. I was relegated to the couch for my irrational exuberance when my wife was still so green behind the ears in her medical transcription training. But we survived, and amazingly, even thrived. We teamed up with my wife's parents and began to expand our presence in the marketplace. It was slow going at first, but eventually we built our little Medical Transcription company up to a level where we had dozens of medical transcriptionists working for us. It was an extremely exciting time!Click here for our recommended Medical Transcription Program leading to an exciting home based medical transcription career
