What on earth did the doctor say??

Today I feel like writing about my work, and it's probably because it has been taking so much of my time the last few weeks. This is not about housework or family care or anything like that. It's about medical transcription.

Life takes twists and turns, many that we would never expect, and that's exactly the case for me. I didn't foresee that after 25 years as a secretary in an office setting, I would need to work at home to cover Coral's care, but that is what happened, so with much trepidation I began to study things like medical terminology, body systems, drug names, and diseases. I have to admit that I didn't have a good picture of what this would be like, even though I had done lots and lots of office dictation. I soon realized that this is not common everyday language, and that doctors don't dictate slowly and clearly like my boss always had! But at the same time, I was thrilled at how the challenge and the constant learning energized me!

I began work over the internet for a small company that did not give me enough to do to even call it "work," but I plugged away at it hoping it would count as "experience" some day.

Then I heard of a local doctor who needed a new transcriptionist. My stomach was all nerves, but I put together my resume, wrote my best cover letter, and faxed them off to him with some samples of my "experience!" ("Lord, if this is what you want me to do, please make it work out, because you know I'm just not very confident!") In a couple of days, he called me, and I went in for an interview.

I'll never forget that first microcassette I brought home. I rushed out and bought a transcriber, popped the tape in, and got ready to type. My "experience" was almost useless! He talked so fast and swallowed so many of his words that even my very best try was full of blanks! But as time went on, I began to understand his way of talking, and what had taken me a whole day of painful relistening became half a day with time to spare. After that, I applied for a job with a transcription company in another state and began working for them, too, receiving digital voice files and sending back my work over the internet.

A few months ago, my local doctor client and I decided it was time to switch over to getting our work back and forth over the internet, too. We wanted to shorten the time it was taking to get his records back to him, plus I hate driving in the snow! Thus began the research (we had to find the best digital recorder for the least money!) and all the technical questions. This was all complicated somewhat by the fact that we must encrypt everything to send it over the internet because of the need to ensure the privacy of medical records. I do believe that my computer knowledge has been stretched, and I KNOW the doctor's has been!

This past week we began actually forgetting about the microcassettes and doing it the new way. Both of us messed up to begin with. I sent him blank documents somehow, and he tried to open encrypted documents with the wrong program, but by mid-week we were beginning to feel confident, and on Friday we didn't even have to call on the phone to be sure everything had gone right. Now I call that success!

People sometimes say, "It can't be that hard. You just type what you hear, right?" But what on earth did he say? What word did she just drown out with the flap and thwop of the x-ray film? What medication did he dictate just as the phone rang? Was that "lisinopril" or "fosinopril" that he said with a big yawn?? Hmm...she said 500 mg, but I know that drug is usually 10 mg. Is the drug name wrong, or is the dosage wrong? We have to do much more than type whatever we think it is we hear, because your life might depend on it.

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might." --Ecclesiates 9:10