The correct attitude for a Medical Transcriptionist should be one of independence and responsibility for his or her work. Medical Transcriptionists function with a minimum of direct supervision. The majority do have an immediate supervisor ?somewhere? responsible for quality control. Working as a professional Medical Transcriptionist means to take pride in the accuracy and completeness of your work. A professional gains satisfaction from a job well done.
Excellent proofreading skills are critical for a Medical Transcriptionist. Proofreading is looking for mistakes of all types in a transcribed document and correcting them. The most common errors a Medical Transcriptionist will be looking for include:
? Omission of important dictated words
? Selecting the wrong English or medical word
? Misspelling words
? Typographical errors
? Grammatical errors
? Punctuation errors
Proofreading skills will improve with practice. You will know what your areas of weaknesses are as you proofread and find your errors. If you find that you miss few medical words, but misspell many English words, you can improve by paying particular interest in English words as you transcribe and proofread dictation.
Consider the following four-step method to help you achieve the best results from your proofreading:
1. Look words up in reference books as you encounter them. Don't wait until the end of the report. You will have forgotten how some of the words sounded. Search until you find and don't go any further in your medical transcribing until you find the words you get stumped on. Leave a blank if you exhaust all resources and still cannot find your word.
2. Briefly proofread what you transcribe as it appears on the screen of your word processor or the paper you are typing on. This will help you catch missed words and typographical errors as they occur. Print out your reports on paper if you are using a word processor. It is easier to proofread the printed report on paper than it is on the screen.
3. If you just cannot find a word, leave a blank of an appropriate length, according to how long or short the word sounds. Attach a flag (a flag is a sheet of paper clipped to the report or a sticky note placed on the report which identifies all blanks, which lines of the report they are located on, and what the dictated word sounded like to you.
4. Use a medical or English spellchecker as the final step in proofreading. Spellcheckers will not catch errors such as transcribing no instead of not or transcribing ilium instead of ileum.
Excellent proofreading skills come only after continual practice to perfect. Consider the following tips:
? To avoid omitting important dictated words adjust the speed control on the transcriber unit and transcribe slowly to assure no dictated words are overlooked. Slowly increase your speed of the tape, which will increase transcription speed as you learn to keep up with the dictator.
? The tape recording (if you are transcribing from a tape) does not perfectly reproduce the human voice. Sometimes the words and phrases sound garbled or something quite different from what they really are. A Medical Transcriptionist should never transcribe what he or she ?thinks? they hear. You should transcribe only what makes sense in the context of the report. Careful word searching and careful attention to word definitions help the Medical Transcriptionist to avoid selecting the wrong English or medical word. The wrong medical word can convey a wrong diagnosis for a patient. The error can be carried in the patient's permanent medical record and cause extreme havoc and chaos. The professional Medical Transcriptionist NEVER transcribes anything that does not make sense and/or cannot be verified in a reference book. In other words, don't just make up a word either just to fill in all the blanks. It is better to leave a blank.
? Misspelling of medical and English words can be avoided by careful proofreading and using a spellchecker.
? Typographical errors are usually the result of carelessness or attempts to type too fast rather than focusing on accuracy. Careful proofreading will eliminate typographical errors.
? Grammatical errors are hard to catch while transcribing and must be identified through careful proofreading.
? Punctuation errors can actually change the medical meaning of a sentence. Keep your punctuation references within easy reach.
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? 2007 Connie Limon All Rights Reserved
Roughly fifteen years ago the early medical aesthetic pioneers began to work with energy based devices such as lasers in an effort to hone these technologies into useful tool that could be utilized to create changes in human tissue. The first accomplishment in this area of research came in the form of the closure of vascular lesions. These include spider veins, or telangiectasia, vascular birthmarks and angiomas.
A laser was used to create heat in order to photo-cauterize the broken or dilated capillaries, thus triggering the bodys natural healing process of a damages structure. This process had been performed for several years prior to this time in ophthalmic surgical procedures, but never previously for a cosmetic benefit.
This breakthrough and the subsequent public demand for laser vascular lesion reduction services led to the establishment of the first of what we now commonly refer to as medical spas. Years later the fundamental concepts that provided for this tremendous shift in the cosmetic medical industry produced new applications and new laser and energy based technologies that account for the basis of the more than 3000 medical spas that stretch across the country today.
Present day cosmetic medical laser technicians can use a specific form of energy to tighten skin, stimulate the production of collagen to eliminate wrinkles and fine line, remove tattoos or unwanted hair, or a myriad of other highly sought after services.
One of the important factors that all of these services have in common is that they can be performed without the use of anesthesia, without the pitfalls of surgery, and with no down time or recovery period. These are known as non-invasive procedures.
As a result, we will find in the coming years that these services are no longer exclusive to the physicians office. The medical aesthetics industry is in the midst of a significant shift. This shift can be seen in the increasing prevalence of non-physician owned medical spas in more retail oriented locations. These businesses are now common place in shopping malls or retail centers. This is truly only the beginning.
The next phase of growth for this industry is going to be found in our traditional spas and salons. There is a large influx of inquiries about medical aesthetic services coming from spa and salon professionals. These individuals are beginning to view the procedures as simply more advanced versions of the skin care and aesthetic services they have been providing for decade, but now with much better tools.
The likelihood is high that as more and more non-medical businesses get involved with these services, more of their peers will have to strongly consider whether they want or need to keep up with the competition. This will breed additional growth until it simply becomes common place and almost expected of these businesses to have these resources available for their clients.
Both Connie Limon & Jason Begley are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.