My New Medical Transcription Office

As promised, I am posting pictures of my new office redo, the place where I will be doing my new medical transcription job. To start with, here's a before picture of the mess I had let my office get in...



My husband was happy to help me redo the paint and cover up some dings (many of them!!) in the office walls. Then started the fun part -- decorating! I am most definitely on a budget, so I did a lot of thrift store shopping and spray painting.

The office color scheme I chose was from some curtains that I made for the windows about a year ago from a thrifted duvet cover. I love the 1920s green, the robin's egg blue and the pink and red. Very vintage. The office theme evolved into birds and roses.

I added many little touches to the office, including an old painted tool box to hold some Our State magazines for my breaks.

Some special things that I brought in for the office were the following:

A poster called Windows of Burano by Catherine Archuleta. I wanted something officey but not too officey. I wanted something pretty to look at, but not something distracting! I think it's perfect. One of the things that is so great about the frame is its standard size, so I can change out the poster and change the look of that wall whenever I'm tired of what's there now.

Another little touch was this heavy cast bird that I found at Tuesday Morning for just under 5 dollars! The bird watches over the mail tray, as if he just flew in with it!

I found a couple of rose chintz plates at the thrift store for just a song. The rose pattern fits in nicely and the colors are perfect! You'll notice the robin sitting up high at the top of the painted brick column that makes the corner of the office. Again, the plates can be changed out to different places should I desire a change of decor.

Finally, here are some pictures of the finished product. I have all my computer equipment set up and I am ready to go!

Two very inexpensive desks, exactly alike, were purchased from Staples and put side by side to make a work station across the entire back wall of the office. This houses two complete computers. My work computer and my personal computer.

For memos, I picked up a memo board from the thrift store -- in totally the wrong fabric -- and recovered it and put some ribbon strips on it with my hot glue gun. The lamp shade is also a cheap department store shade to which I added beaded trim with the hot glue gun. The candlestick lamp was 5 dollars.

A wicker chair has a new cushion added to match the office colors. The farm house table below was a good buy and fit in perfectly as a place for the laptop that the kids use. The drawer in the farm house table houses my stationery and is the place where I sit down to write in my journal.
I love the little area above. You probably cannot see -- maybe you can -- that I put pink tags in the slots in front of each file cabinet drawer. I'm serious about this color scheme!! With a closer shot you can see the birds there...

I have a few silk rose buds in a vase, but often I move them to make room for fresh flowers from the garden. I love to step out into my garden on my breaks when it's sunny out. Here's the view from the window this May. This has been my best year ever for roses.

I really am excited about my new job and I did everything I could to make my office a place that is comfortable and that I will want to transcribe in! I'll be in here 8 hours a day, after all.

Happy Transcribing,

Lynn

Coming Back to Medical Transcription

I left the medical transcription industry with so much sadness and disappointment. Honestly, I was very fed up with the way some of the big companies are treating MTs. At-home MTs are being made to do some really garbage transcription, they are being yanked from account to account -- never getting one account long enough to get good and make decent money, and they are given WAY too many jobs done by dictators with a foreign accent or who just don't care and -- again -- they cannot make any money that way.

Medical transcriptionists are skilled. Mostly, they will produce only as good a product as is spoken to them into the microphone to start with. Doctors, are you hearing that????

Anyway, I am returning to the industry, but only after (thank you so much) being offered a job that, so far, seems wonderful. The pay is generous. The hours are good. I am responsible and I know that I have to be at my desk transcribing, but there is also the flexibility that should go with an at-home job. I am being treated like the professional that I am! So, I'm back and I hope I can stay in the industry. My office is getting a big RE-DO and I will post before and after pictures very soon.

Just wanted to say HELLO AGAIN, HELLO!

Lynn

Saying Goodbye to MT

I have decided that I can no longer do medical transciption. My last day in this industry was 12/31/2006, and I think I can NEVER go back. I just cannot continue in the direction of such stress and change in the industry--little good change that I can see. So, I head out into a new direction, very happy.

MTBlab

Can I keep doing medical transcription?

I think the answer, sadly, is no. At least not full time right now. There's a part of me that still loves what I do. I love words. I love making a document really perfect, but the intense stress of being an MT is just becoming too much. One may wonder how something so "easy" (yeah right) can be so stressful.

It's a number of things:

~It's being paid by production. If you happen to get a string of dictationists who don't speak clearly, or who whisper, or who eat while they are dictating, etc., you can't make a full day's pay, even though you may work more than eight hours. (Stress!)
~It's working your fingers to the bone only to be fussed at by the main office that you need to do more or that your account is behind and CAN you do more. (Stress!)
~It's not getting paid for the time that your internet service is down, or for the time you are down because for some odd reason you cannot log in to work, or for the time you are sitting in a doctor's office with a sick child, and yet when you finally get things straightened out you are expected to "make up your lines," no matter what that might mean, i.e., no weekend, no day off, no sleep...
~It's the minimum pay per line dropping down to a ridiculous amount, even for people like me who have nearly 20 years' experience because there are those in other countries who will do the work for nearly nothing (called "off shoring"), so pay has not gone up to meet the cost of living, but, rather, DOWN!

It's other things as well. Perhaps burn-out is an issue. My job is so important. A person's medical record is extremely important. Perhaps it's time for me to move on and let a new, excited person do this job.

For now, I will just do this part time. At least I can be thankful that I have that option.

Maybe I can get my zeal back, unless, of course, the pay jumps down another notch.

Going into Medical Transcription

Just a little something you need to know. Life at home as a medical transcriptionist can get very stressful. Recently my husband has had four allergic reactions. Not anaphylactic, but they could become so. He gets covered in hives so big and so diffuse that he looks like he has been beat up. We have made ER trips, trips to a local MD and had a referral to an allergist, only to end up in the ER again. We think that they have found the culprit (shellfish), but my husband's skin and immune system are in "alert" mode now. He is having rebound hives from all the steroids and his skin just seems to be in "hive" mode. Right now it feels like this will go on forever.

Guess who had to make his appointments, drive him to his appointments and help him get his meds? Me, of course. Did I miss work time? YES. Could he have done it all himself? Well, I guess, but it's hard to look up phone numbers and drive when your eyes are nearly swollen shut and it's hard to be really alert and make calls and appointments when you are taking Benadryl around the clock.

Do my supervisors understand? Well, I'm not sure. I'm really not. They are fussing at me and sending me letters in the mail about my line count. My position with them is "being evaluated."

I am operating under such stress right now, I am afraid I am going to have a nervous breakdown or end up with a heart attack. Our medical insurance comes from MY job. And I only get it if I produce full-time lines. So you do the math.

An ER visit only costs about 1500 dollars--what's up with the medical system in the US is another whole post--so I can't really afford to let my insurance lapse.

Sigh. I am just hoping that a door of relief will open for me soon. Even just a little window would be appreciated.

One word of advice. You might want to rethink getting your medical insurance based on being able to produce full-time lines. You never know what will happen. Buying your own insurance policy independently or making sure your spouse can get medical insurance may be the best way to go. That way, your medical coverage does not hinge on your being able to be at your desk and/or your supervisor having sympathy for you.

MTBlab

Believe it or not...

it helps me to come here and listen to myself blab about the art of medical transcription.

I sometimes get into a very slow groove by checking over every single thing too many times, but when I do that my line count slows WAAAAAY down. Then I remember, I am getting paid to be a professional producer of medical documents, NOT a typist. There is a big difference.

I cannot spend 5 minutes trying to figure out if the doctor did indeed mean that the white count AND the hemoglobin were both 14.7. No, I just type in what he says and move on.

I cannot spend 30 mintes on a 1 minute report because the doctor mumbles and talks way too fast. It is HE who has little regard for the completed document. He also is making WAY more than I am. I figure it will help everyone in the long run for me to, of course, do my best, but then to leave a blank where a blank is truly due. Maybe he will get the picture.

MTBlab

HYPO VS. HYPER

Doctors, come ON!!!, PLEASE!!!

Do you realize how hard it is to distinguish between "hypo" and "hyper" when you are mumbling??

Sheesh.

Shortcuts Lead to Errors...

A couple of things are on my mind. First is what I call the expander program "malapop." You are typing along, doing great, when you put in a shortcut to a long word or phrase and, the next thing you know, you have sent in a job with a glaring error in it.

We HAVE to be careful with autokeys, expanders, shortcuts--whatever you want to call them.

For example, the letters "caen" can stand for

~cardiac enzymes
~carotid endarterectomy
~cardiac enlargement

as well as a couple of other things that won't come to mind right now. Be careful to watch what "pops" out of your expander, or you may end up with a malapop.