I mentioned before that I was hoping to take off a few
months when I moved to Idaho. I was actually
hoping to take off about 6 months. I thought I wanted that time to just get
used to living in a new city, especially so far away from family and
friends. I had been working just about
nonstop since I was 17 years old, so taking an extended “vacation” sounded like
the perfect thing to do as I adjusted to Western living. Joe still marvels that I got our entire
belongings unpacked and our house organized the way I wanted it in less than 2
weeks. Well, when you have no phone, no
car and no TV, what else is there to do?
I do love to organize things to the point of almost being obsessive
about it, so those 2 weeks I had a ball figuring out where to put things. I am very lucky that my husband does not care how I organize. I just need to let him know where everything is (and then
usually have to remind him from time to time where to look).
Almost to the day that I got everything in its proper place
and ready to just relax and enjoy, I got the call from Joe’s office that they
needed help, and thus began my local service in Idaho. Of course, I could have said no, but I really
don’t think I could have gone 6 months without working. When you love what you do, and I have for
most of my career, it really is hard to stay away. Working for Joe’s office was also a great way
to get to know his co-workers, some of whom are still my friends to this day,
so it was definitely a win-win situation for me.
I have also found it interesting how different physicians
can be in their dictation habits. There
were 5 docs in this practice when I first started. Fortunately they were all pretty easy to
understand, so it was not too much of an effort to get settled in to their
style of dictating. A couple of the
physicians did sinus surgery, and that would include CT scans of the
sinuses. The one doc was very organized
and methodical in his dictations. He went
through the findings of each sinus in the same order every time, and it got to
a point where I could almost transcribe ahead of what he dictated. The other doc was the complete opposite. He was very unorganized which came through in
his dictations with jumping around the sinuses and often losing his train of
thought with things like “The ethmoids, no wait, the frontal, no, go back to
the ethmoids or did I mean the maxillary, yeah, the maxillary….” It was kind of like putting a patchwork quilt
together each time I transcribed one of his scans.
I constantly emphasize to my students that it is so
important that we have a good understanding of what we are transcribing. This doc was a prime example of that, because
I was able to put his reports together in the right order with the right
information under the correct sinus area.
That paid off, too, because one day he caught me in the hallway and
thanked me for making sense of his CT scan reports! MTs don’t often get compliments or thanks for
their work, so that was a moment I will never forget.
One of the other docs (the one who also dictated on CT scans
and was wonderfully organized with his dictations) was also usually very long-winded
with his chart notes. He would also
dictate letters to insurance companies when payment was denied or there was
some type of error or difficulty with a patient’s documentation. I wish I had kept at least one of those
letters because he had such a great way of more or less telling these insurance
people they were utter idiots but without actually saying that. These letters were almost always at least 2
pages long, but I so enjoyed those dictations.
You would think transcribing insurance letters would be the epitome of
boring, but not so these letters! I
often have wondered if any of the recipients of those letters really got what
this doc was really saying to them, but I would venture to guess they never
did.
Over time, this practice opened an office in Elko, Nevada,
and I eventually did the transcription for that office. Joe and one of the docs, along with a few
medical assistants, would fly down to Elko once a week to see patients down
there. There was also a PA (physician
assistant) who ran that office full-time, and it was his dictation that I
started to do on a regular basis. It was
also my very good fortune that this PA was one of the nicest guys I ever had
the pleasure to work for, because there was a time when I made a mistake that
could have resulted in one very severe tongue lashing or quite possibly losing
the account.
I’ll talk about that next time, along with those handful of
opportunities that came my way that I was hoping to have avoided but wound up
being great experiences for me, both personally and professionally. In the meantime, I hope all of my readers
have a very Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving.
It sure seems to be early this year, but I guess that means more time for
Christmas shopping! Enjoy your day and
your holiday!
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