More Than One Way

I really thought that I would be finished with school by now. I plowed my way through the objective portion in a month. Of course I thought that the practicum would fly by as well. Part of slowing down was just trying to figure out the dictations. Poor audio quality and learning medical terminology is not in any way conducive to making things go quickly.

It may be frustrating to me that I'm not finished yet, but I'm learning that I have options I may not have had before starting the course.

Huh? What options could there be? You're only 2/3 through the transcriptions and have the editor modules to do as well. What are you talking about? You're stuck!

Oh, not so! Not so at all. I'm very comfortable sitting at my desk with my headphones attached to my head. My fingers quite confidently tap the keys that I want them to. My hands only ache during weather changes I've noticed. That is something I can deal with as needed. So what am I talking about?

Transcription. Who said that we're only supposed to do one kind of transcription in order to earn our living? I need to be working now. Two or three months from now, my money situation isn't going to get any better unless I do something about it.

I've put together a very rudimentary resume and started putting out feelers to companies that have general transcription services. I KNOW I can type these. It's just a matter of identifying more than one voice at a time and dealing with audio issues. Yes, that's a very simplistic viewpoint. The hardest thing about medical transcription is the getting values, lab data, procedures, and terminology correct. At least, those are the most difficult things for me. Please don't remind me about the East Indian ESLs.

With general transcription there will be specialized terminology based on the dictation type, but this is okay. I've got one humdinger of a vocabulary! I love new words. Once I get one in my head and have looked it up, it's usually going to stick for a while, especially when I use it more than once or twice during one report and don't see it again for a while.

Look, the way I see it, I'll be doing myself a favor. I can't stand not working and providing for my family, and I'm no longer able to work outside the home. I've got two options. I can work solely on my reports for the course and limit my ability to provide by only applying for Medical Transcription. Or, I can start getting off my duff and TCB! With General Transcription jobs, I can start getting my feet wet with transcribing, still work on the course, and provide some much-needed income.

Of course, this really depends on whether or not anyone is hiring for general typing jobs and whether or not they're interested in hiring a qualified and potentially amazing new transcriptionist. I've seen too many general typing jobs advertised to not start throwing applications at them!

I'm not giving up on MT! I'm just adding another layer of skills and experience. I'm good with multitasking!

On to BAC

Does BAC mean Basic Acute Care? Sometimes I think it means Balance And Calm.

BAC is challenging and I will not say it isn't. I've had reports that make me feel like I got hit with the Stupid Stick. Fortunately, that feeling is much less prevalent than in Clinic Notes. Do I get perfect reports? Nope. Do I know everything I need? Not even close. Do I feel more confident? Yes.

The confidence is because I've learned Balance. The dictations are not easier. I don't think there is such a thing. The Balance comes because I KNOW that I'm learning. Before, it was like I felt I had to be perfect. That I was supposed to know how to make the reports perfect just because I'd been through the Objective portion of the Career Step course and that should make everything clear and understandable.

It's one thing to think that you're learning. It's quite another to internalize it and make it part of your philosophy. The detailed and difficult progression through the bookwork gives a sense that you know everything you need to know in order to do transcription well. You passed the midterm exam and got a great grade didn't you? So how come Clinic Notes kicked you in the head? Are you really dumb and just didn't know it? NO! Not even close.

It took all of Clinic Notes and about 1/4 of  Basic Accute Care to really KNOW that I'm still learning. Duh! Right? Not really. It just took that long to give myself permission to not be perfect. That I needed that long to get it irritates me, but it's not the end of the world. Research and continual learning is part and parcel of the career that I signed up for. Even graduates and working MTs are still learning their craft. Sometimes I'm just a little denser than I'd like to admit.

BAC is where I've been learning to really dig into researching for answers. It's where my Shorthand expander is becoming more and more my friend. BAC is where I'm finding that I don't NEED to look up as many medications or medical words or procedures. Wow! I really am learning something! My speed is still laughable, but that's okay with me. Speed won't really pick up unless I've got regular doctors and templates for them set up.

With the Balance that comes from KNOWING that I'm learning comes the Calm that everything is progressing exactly as it should. Whoa! Where did that come from? Calm? I haven't been calm in years! Giving myself permission to learn made all the difference. The pressure is off! Yay! I can keep learning, expecting to have glaring mistakes, expecting to have to look something up multiple times before it sticks in my almost 40-year-old brain. (Hey! Don't laugh! It takes longer to put things in there and make them stay than it used to!)

I hope you find the Balance and Calm in your life and learning. There's that old saying that as long as you're learning you're alive. Well, it's true! Give yourself permission to go back to your gradeschool or high school self. The pressure comes off. Your brain becomes much more accepting of new information, and believe it or not, you may find yourself enjoying the process more than you thought!

Clinic Notes - How on Earth did I get through it?

Working my way through Clinic Notes, I felt panicky and nervous. Staying motivated was a huge effort. Let's just say I wasn't always successful and leave it there.

All right, I won't just leave it there. This is supposed to be about my student journey and I need to be open and honest. It was so hard to listen to the dictations and think that I could possibly get good at this! Every report that had word swallowers, mumblers, speed talkers, and just general poor audio quality made it feel like I was trying to walk through hip-deep thick mud! I would get through one of these awful reports, hit the submit, get the comparison, and want to hit my computer with a baseball bat! Then, I'd quit working for the day.

So much for doing one report after the next. (Sigh) I felt defeated. But even more than that, I was pissed off! Not at the school. Not at the material I was trying to learn. I was mad at myself! How could I be so dumb? How could I not hear that slurred bit of dictation? Didn't I see that medical term three reports ago? How'd I miss that?

Getting through high school with As and Bs didn't prepare me for trying to get through these dictations and the inevitable failures. I never failed to learn what was placed in front of me! How could this be happening?

I went back through "How to Have a Beautiful Gradebook." Thank you Jill. I went through the Transcription Consultation video. Thank you Jill. I went through the forum. Thank you students and staff! I managed to hold on to my ability to click "NEXT" and attempt the next report. Barely.

During the middle of Clinic Notes, I was also given the horrible financial news that I was going to lose my Social Security, that my Mom was getting more and more ill, and my children were being completely and insanely irresponsible. I was fighting with my brother. I was in pain from injuries, old and new. I was just about ready to jump into the psychiatric ward at the hospital with my poor mangled brain in my hands. Slowly, this horrible period of my life started to calm and the hospital stay was receding from immediate possibility! How? The first part was getting back on medication. (Insert shrugging here.) Sometimes, you grab whatever life preserver you can. Then it was the forum. My friends in Keep On Keepin' On welcomed me every time I posted and helped me to stay encouraging and encouraged me to keep moving forward.

The more I encouraged others, the better I felt. The more positive feedback I got, the easier it was to believe it. Anyone who reads my posts on the forum can probably see that I'm just trying to lift others and keep them going. Supporting them, when they can't support themselves completely, helps to remind myself that I'm not the only one who's got problems, struggles, or needs support!

It's true that helping others can provide relief to yourself. This, apparently, is true of me as well. Who knew that Career Step provided therapy?

Working Through the Report

 The very first thing is always the hardest part. Deciding to stop putting it off. You've got work to do. A goal to reach. Get off your duff and get to work! At least that's what I have to tell myself when my family has thrown me a few curve balls in too rapid of succession and I really don't feel up to it.

After making the decision to put my fingers to the task, I try to make sure my desk is cleared off and set up to be most efficient for me. I have my coffee or soda, my hardcopy references like my medical dictionary, English dictionary, thesaurus, Pill Book, Gray's Anatomy, Stedman's books, notebook, binder, pen, and phone on top of my desk. I also have my reading glasses for that stupid tiny print they use in most of these books. I'm thankful every day for Ctr + and - to adjust the size of the letters on my screen. I love reading. I don't love glasses. Go figure.

With BenchmarkKB, Career Step, and Gmail tabs open and Shorthand primed and ready, with my trusty noise-canceling headphones I am ready to listen to dictations. Or am I? Nope. I have 2 browsers open at all times. I may never need the second one, but sometimes I need to open the same page in different browsers for research. Many times I have Career Step open in the second browser so I can research the information in the course. I often use my own saved copies of previous reports in Word to research as well. Like when I can't for the life of me remember how to format an Ophthalmology report. Please save me from that beasty!

I usually use a modified 3 pass method for transcribing, just like what they tell you to do in the Transcription Consultation. First pass is for listening and transcribing what I hear easily. I generally need to change the speed of the dictation because I just don't type fast enough straight, and I'm not good enough to keep up (yet) with Shorthand. If there's a word I know but can't seem to spell, I plug it into Benchmark, Google, or The Free Dictionary. Usually that's enough to find what I'm looking for and type it correctly in it's place.

The Second pass is for plugging the holes. Usually it's a medication, dosage, laboratory value, and (thank you doctor mumble/speed talker) vital signs. It would be so much nicer if the numbers that actually affect patient care were clearly spoken. Don't you think? This is also when I listen over and over to those hard to hear sections of bad audio, cut off words, slang, abbreviations, diagnoses or tests that doctors also like to mangle into unrecognizable mush. I take this time to proofread the document and see if there's anything else that I can fix. Then I hit submit.

I add up my errors and put that into the points to deduct. When it tells me what percentage I scored, I take the whole report from the report number to the last of the footnotes and put it into a new Word document.

The Third pass is for retyping the report while listening to the dictation and keeping an eyeball on the comparison over there on my open Word document. How pretty it looks sitting over there with all those patriotic colors! So distracting. My new report looks good. I've proofread it for typos, run the spellchecker, and bravely hit the submit button again. If it's a clean report, I input 0 points to deduct and copy and paste the whole thing to my Word document again. With the lovely little 100% showing that I've put in the time, effort, research, and work to make the best report I could.

I save the whole thing, both versions of my report, under the report number, the module, type and specialty. You might be wondering why I don't just keep the finished report and get rid of the first one. Because I NEED to see where I had problems in the report. I can't see what I need to work on if I don't have the comparison report with the colors.

I love the searchability of Word. When I need to look up a type of report I can find it. If I have a doctor that is just beating my brain, I can search for other report numbers closest to the one I'm working on. Nine times out of 10 I'll find a report by the same doctor and can look at what he did with the last one.

I think the biggest problem that students have is panicking when the first submission comes back and they've missed things they think were right, or the comparison shows a style difference they didn't think was there. I've developed a little bit of a Zen attitude toward the comparison. I've done everything I possibly can to get a good report. Is there an error? Maybe. Is there a style difference? Probably. Am I learning from it? ABSOLUTELY!

Should I feel defeated because I don't know everything about this report, dictator, or specialty? No. Should I feel like I will never "get it" just because I didn't this time? No. I'm still learning. Mistakes, Homer-like D'oh! moments, and style issues don't have the power to overwhelm me. I take a break. Go play around, ruffle the dogs, do the dishes, visit the forum, and come back ready to tackle the next challenge.

If life was that simple and straight forward, I'd have it made!

Finding Ideas

Yesterday, I spent the day working with my brother. He was moving. How is it that even though I don't get tapped for the packing and carrying part of things anymore, but I still get the clean up duty? Oh wait, I can answer that! I used to clean houses for a living! Today turned into one giant fight with my body. Hello... Dipstick...If you haven't done something for a while, you're body makes you sore the next day out of revenge. I know it's lactic acid in the muscles and joints that aren't used to certain motions, but it sounds more interesting when I say it's revenge.

For the last week or so, my fingers, wrists, and arms have been complaining. Yesterday's cleaning spree just made them louder. I sat down and typed out 1 report. A 5 minute dictation took me over an hour! Why? Because my fingers refused to cooperate with the signals my brain was trying to send them. I finally just took some Tylenol and ibuprofen and laid down. I went to sleep right away and woke 6 hours later feeling more like myself.

I'm not sure why my fingers, wrists, and arms are so achy. I'm wondering if it's the fibromyalgia that I was diagnosed with last month. I really should do more research about it. Right now, I know that it's a chronic pain condition where the muscles are sent inappropriate signals through the nerves telling them to feel pain. I don't know if regular use of certain muscles will increase the signals or if sudden use of muscles that aren't used to it will increase the signals. Knowing more about it will probably help me to not provoke increases in the pain signals. I do know that sometimes it's more about just rolling with the punches.

I've been reading through a couple of the blogs started by my fellow Career Step students and alumni. Both of these ladies have great insights into MT, the career and learning how to become an MT. They've inspired me to increase my posting frequency and work on the content. http://virtuallytheretranscriptionists.blogspot.com/ and http://clubhousemt.blogspot.com/

I started this blog when I knew I was going to be enrolled in the Career Step Transcription course and then got so busy with the school and forum that I let it slide. Of course, as you've probably noticed, life has also been an issue.

It's interesting that I never really thought about what it would be like after I graduated. I just thought about what the training is and trying to do my best with that. After searching through my own experience with the school and how active I've been in the forum, I realized that I really do have a lot to say.

Along with spending dedicated time with reports, I'm going to mine my posts on the forum and work through some of the issues I have posted and commented on there. Ideas have to come from somewhere. Right? Well, let's see how it goes.

See you later!