When I Wanted to Say No

So it was back in 1996 at the AAMT (now AHDI) annual convention in Minneapolis where my teaching career started to take shape, although I did  not know it at the time.  A couple of my MT friends were talking about starting a medical transcription school.  They made the decision to jump in, and the Medical Transcription Education Center (M-TEC) was born, based in Akron, Ohio.  I had moved to Idaho in late 1994, so I got involved by being a volunteer advisor.  Mostly it was just projects like proofreading things or helping with ideas for the web site.  Their motto was “Strengthening the MT Industry Through Education,” and I added it to read “…Through Quality Education” or “…Through Excellence in Education.”  I can’t remember which I suggested, but I remember it was a lot of fun being a part of the process.  In 1998, I started posting a Tip of the Week on the message forums and later changed that to Study Hall Notes.

As I have written in earlier posts, I had my own service in Idaho and also began working at a national service, so the volunteer work at M-TEC was nothing more than a lot of fun for me. The owners of the school were also the instructors, but on top of that, they were running the business of the school.   As the student roster grew, it was getting more and more difficult for the 2 CMTs to handle the students and the business, so they needed to hire instructors. I was a natural to ask only because I had already been involved with the school just about from the beginning.  I have always been pretty confident in my skill set as far as transcribing, but teaching medical transcription?  That was a whole new ball game and one I did not think I could play very well.  I would not even know where to start.

Finally, Susan talked me into just being a grader.  Grade tests using a key—very simple stuff.  I think I did that less than 2 months when she said she was going to send me a small group of students. What?!  I wanted to say no, but then again, I really did want to take on this new challenge.   At least if we found I was not very good at teaching, there would not be many students to transfer to another instructor.  I was already set up as an independent contractor, so the only thing that changed was actually working one-on-one with students.  They were already asking me questions with their graded tests, so starting out as a grader was an excellent way to get my feet wet.  

So in the spring of 2000, I turned my career to teaching.  At this point, I had 3 computers in my office.  There was the computer the national MTSO had sent me because it was fitted with their platform, plus you could not get on the internet, as it was only connected to the main office of the service where you downloaded the voice files.  Then I had my PC for my local service accounts, and I used a laptop for my teaching.  I honestly don’t know why I thought I had to keep the teaching separate from my clients, but for a time, that is what I did.  It did not take me too long to realize that 3 jobs was a bit too much, so I resigned from the national service in 2000, and that is really the last time I transcribed acute care dictation. 

As my student roster grew, I began to realize that working with students and clients was leaving little time for an outside life or even sleep.  I had only one client and one p.r.n. account, but my main account was a very busy office, on top of which the docs there would dictate all of their chart notes for a full week and expected me to get those back to them within a 24-hour turn-around time.  So in April of 2002, I decided to drop that client.  One of the physicians there was a great guy, excellent dictator, and very appreciative of my work.  He happened to be the one in the office the day I was going in to tell them in person I would have to quit. 

You know when you have those times when you are going to cry, and absolutely nothing in the world will stop those tears?  It’s about as impossible as trying to stifle a sneeze!  Well, when I saw Randy, that is exactly what happened to me.  He was so sweet, gave me a big hug and said it would be all right.  But he did go on to ask me if I would at least do their operative reports.  How could I say no?  I did continue to do the op reports until March of 2009.  For a lot of reasons I won’t detail here, the surgery center had gotten down to very few surgeries, Randy was no longer a part of the practice (which is the main reason why I stayed on), and I was spending more on gas to pick up those dictations than I was actually billing them, or at least pretty close. 

As of March 2009, my only job was teaching, and it turned out to be the best job I have ever had.  I’ll get into more details about that experience in my next post.  Until then, enjoy your day.  Take care.