Getting Started In Medical Transcription

I get a lot of people asking me how they can get started in medical transcription.   There are plenty of online schools, some better than others, but they don't seem to help you get started much after you graduate.   In today's industry I think it is most important to find a school that will offer you an internship or externship.  I did an unpaid externship but it also got me my first hospital job.  The catch 22 in medical transcribing is you need experience to get a job and when coming fresh out of school you obviously have no experience.  I went through my community college, but if you can find an online school that offers intern/externships then choose the one that does. 

Next, look for a school that will teach you the medical language including prefixes, suffixes, and anatomy.   But that is a small part of the job; you also need to understand about the medical record system.  What types of records you will be typing.  Being a rookie you will start typing discharge summaries, so it would be nice to know what they are!  After that they may move you to consultations and history and physicals.  You will need to know what those records entail and the purpose of them.  

The school you choose should have an English 101 course as part your certificate.  Every record we type is a legal record and needs to have the proper formatting, punctuation, and style.  Having a good grasp on the proper grammar will get you out of QA faster.  A transcriptionist who doesn't need to have everything they type sent to QA is a valued in-disposable employee.  

Your school will be a good one if it teaches you the tools of the trade.  It should show you what types of expanders to choose from and how to set them up, what research tools you should use, dictionaries, websites, equipment sites, etc.  Research tools will be especially important, because as a newby you will be researching words half the day.  The tools you use in your home office will determine if you are just a good transcriptionist versus a great one who gets released from QA and a pay increase!  They will also determine how fast you can find info and get back to typing or waste time and money ( because in this biz time is money) looking for info.

Next, obviously you need to be a pretty decent typist., but not in the traditional sense of the word.  I figure about 65% of the words I type are typed in shorthand using expanders (I will blog on this at a later date).  So you don't need to be a super fast typist but instead a smart typist.   

The school you choose should also have a medical ethics course.  You will need some HIPPA training so you know what is allowed and what is not allowed.  Also you should have training in the Medical Transcriptionist Book of Style, which is the gold standard on proper terminology and medical writing.  

As this blog grows hopefully I can show you how to be a great transcriptionist with job security and not just a good one!