Medical Transcription -- The First Year

Now I’m back to those 2 years at my first MT job. I took this job in February of 1976.  I remember feeling this was never going to work out for me because of having no medical background.  When I started, I really did not know what type of terminology I would be transcribing.  On top of that, I had what I thought was a really strange typewriter.  It was an IBM Executive, something I had never heard of before.  It had this tiny little screen where you could see the letters you were typing, but it was so small, you could hardly see a full word.  To make it even more complicated, each letter took up a different amount of spaces. The letter M was 5 spaces, but the letter L was 1 space.  There was terminology to learn, formats to learn, and spacing units to learn.  It was quite the challenge, but I wanted to do a good job, since the only reason I was working at this clinic was because a good friend recommended me, and I did not want to let her down. 

Needless to say, I fell in love with medical transcription. If a profession can be your soul mate, MT was mine!  I could not imagine doing anything else.  As it turns out, I was pretty darn good at this medical transcribing stuff.  It was a great introduction to the field, since the terminology was not that complicated. It is funny to think, though, that all I had was a medical dictionary and a PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference).  Now that I think about it, I don’t hear of too many using that particular reference these days.  I know I could have used their website back in the day, but since there was no internet then, I guess that would not have worked very well. 

The transcription equipment we used was so old.  It was a Dictaphone using a dictabelt, a tape that looked like a brown armband.  It had been introduced to the market in 1947 and very popular for about 10 years, but despite advances in that type of technology, it could still be found in use until around 1979.  When I left my job in July of 1978, they were still going  strong, despite having to call the repair guy about every other week to come out to fix them. 

  

Our machines did not have the handheld dictating piece attached, but this is the machine. Now that brings back some memories!  When the physician was done dictating, he would click it off, and a little hole would be punched in that paper bar you can see on the right side of the machine.  That would slide out, you marked the date on it, and paper clipped that to the tape that slid out on the side of the machine that you can’t see in this picture.  We had about 4 machines, and each one had a designated department, so you always knew which department was dictating.   Our desks sat behind a row of filing cabinets, so if someone came in to get a file, unless they came around the corner to say hello, you never knew who it was.  After working there a short while, I managed to talk my boss into allowing us to rearrange the room so we were not blocked in by all those cabinets.  I guess it just never occurred to anyone else (well, the only other MT working there), to ask if we could do that.  It was so nice to have a much more open and spacious area in which to work, especially since personnel did not come in all day long, just once in a while. 

After my first year of working there, I was promoted to transcription coordinator.  By that time we had hired another full-time MT because the other MT worked in 2 separate departments, so she worked on the rehab clinic side only part-time.  Aside from rearranging the office and just learning the terminology and routine of my job, that first year was fairly uneventful.  I learned a lot, though, and not just formats and muscles of the extremities.  I did have to deal with a few difficult situations, such as a disgruntled employee, a difficult physician, and testifying in court. Did I say fairly uneventful? Guess I’ll have to explain myself, but that’s for another day.  Stay tuned!