Possibilities

For the last few days, I've been fighting a very bad headache. I went to the chiropractor today and he asked me what caused it. Well. Sitting at my desk with the monitor too high. Yep, 2 inches can make a difference. It wasn't completely because I didn't know that the monitor should be set so the top of the screen is at eye height.

A combination of factors led to this. My desk was donated by my brother, who rarely used it. The shelf took up half the space of the top of the desk and the open space of the desk was on the side where the tower has to sit. In order to line up the monitor, keyboard, and chair the monitor had to sit on the shelf. Just completely backwards. That's the only way to describe it.

Last month I had a similar headach that lasted for days. The month before. The month before that too. Finally, my self-preservation kicked in. I removed the shelf. Of course, that didn't fix the damage already done. That's the chiropractor's job!

I just love my chiropractor. He's kept me walking and able to turn my head for many years now. After a bit of torturously fast twists and thumps, I'm mostly headache free. Yay!

Going to the doctor today did give me a unique opportunity though. I asked the doctor how he handles his reports. He's in the dark ages! He does his reports from his own scribbled notes on the charts! Considering the training we're receiving, it is surprising to me that this doctor, who's been in the business for years and years has never had anyone writing his reports for him. He's got a small, 1-man practice and every time I've seen him he's rushing from patient to patient. After his appointments are done for the day, he goes into his x-ray room/office and rewrites his notes into report form for his paper files. Huh? Yep, I said paper files. Are those dirty words in our business?

Anyway, this gave me the opportunity to explain what I'm actually learning, how far along in the course I am, and the school and it's reputation among transcription companies as being one of the few schools that graduates are hired straight out of school. This was also my opportunity to drop the bug in his ear that his method of report writing could be made more efficient for him. I explained that I was familiar with writing chiropractic reports due to my experience doing exactly that for another chiropractor for 2 years and that I was interested in working for him.

We talked for about 15 minutes after my appointment about transcription. I explained my difficulties with East Indian accents and how I would rather work for local doctors so that I might be able to avoid having these types of accounts assigned to me. (Indian doctors are few and far between in my neck of the woods.) I don't want to get my hopes up too high, but he really sounded interested in our discussion topic.

The conversation gave me things to think about. Things like finding doctors locally to work for after graduation. Doctors like my chiropractor, who haven't truly caught up to the changes in technology or the trend toward large transcription companies hiring transcriptionists to work for large pools of doctors or accounts with ESL doctors with accents so thick they're impossible to understand or having difficulty with a dictation because of pronunciation and not being able to find out from the doctor what the word should be.

Living in a town the size of mine and a state that is usually 5-10 years behind times may work to my advantage. It would definitely make my life a little more bearable to not have doctors I can't communicate with directly nor understand half the time!

Possibilities, possibilities! Endless possibilities!