Many MTs have their favorites, such as a favorite specialty
or report type, and even a favorite dictator.
Then you have your not-so-favorites.
I know a lot of MTs absolutely love operative reports, probably because
they can be pretty repetitious, so you can get a lot of them done in a day, and
production is what it’s all about in our profession, unfortunately, but that’s
another story, and you will hear about that later. They are not my cup of coffee (sorry, I’m not
a tea drinker). Taking a look at dictators, well, I won’t name names, even
though some of them have either retired or perhaps even passed on, but I have
had some real—well, there is no adjective that would suffice. Let’s just say they
were difficult, and that’s being kind.
Back in the old days, MTs actually got to work in the
hospital in the medical records department.
So you had access to the patient’s chart, and you had access to the
physicians because they dictated in the same department. I think that type of
work environment is pretty rare these days. But to tell you how bad this one doc was, one
day I was transcribing one of his op reports, and there was this sentence that
none of us could make out. He was
foreign, but his accent was not the problem.
The problem was that he would not open his mouth when he spoke! Plus I think he liked to chew on cotton, lots
of cotton.
He just happened to come into the office when I was sweating
over that dictation. So I called him
over and asked him to take a listen. He
got on his knees beside my chair, and yes it is true you can hear better on
your knees, he listened, he listened again, he looked at me and said “I have no
idea, but you can fix it.” My fix was to
leave the sentence out, with his permission, of course. Thankfully, his discharge summaries were
very, very short, but they were still very, very hard to get through. I often wonder what it must have been like at
his dinner table.
As you can see, I did survive that first day, but just
barely. I was told that our required
production was approximately 20 to 30 reports a day. There was no line counting
in those days, and the 65-character line was yet to be determined. I knew I would not be expected to do 20
reports right away, but I still thought I would be able to reach half that
amount. I was assigned discharge
summaries because it was felt those were the easiest. Our department only did those and the op
reports. H&Ps (history and physical)
were sent out to a local service. I did
2 discharge summaries in the morning and 2 discharge summaries after lunch. I went home in tears knowing full well I would
be told the next day to pack up my desk, and I did not even have anything to
pack up! My husband could not have been
more supportive and assured me they would not give up on me quite that
soon.
Sure enough, the next day they did not tell me to leave. I did decide the only way I was going to
learn was to ask. There were no MT
schools back in the late 1970s.
On-the-job training was the only option.
I don’t remember how long it took me to reach that 20th report, but I do
remember that I spent the next 2 years asking, asking, and more asking. I was so blessed to have a wonderful and
patient mentor who never made me feel like I was a bother. The questions became fewer and fewer over
that time, and my confidence grew day by day. It would have never happened
without the help of Betty. She did not
get into medical transcription until her 50s, and she worked until her 80s. She loved it that much and never felt the
desire to retire until then. I don’t
think I’m going to go quite that long, but I can tell you that I still love it
after all these years and that dreadful first day doing acute care
transcription. I will end today by
saying that discharge summaries are still my favorite report type. Maybe because I spent 2 solid years doing
nothing else, but I love the variety and that one might be 2 short paragraphs
and the next one will be 2 long pages—you never know what you are going to
get.
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