Stephanie – Page 3 – Medical Transcription Basics

Author: Stephanie (page 3 of 9)

What Are the Best Medical Transcriptionist Online Classes Available?

February 28, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

It takes solid training to become a medical transcriptionist. It’s not something many people get to just learn on the job. You have to take the initiative and go to classes to learn it on your own. That makes it important to find the best medical transcriptionist online classes you can. Where are they?

First you have to know which criteria you should be considering when looking at online medical transcriptionist classes. You need to be able to sort out which are good versus which are more about getting you to pay for their classes with little regard for how your career goes after.

You should expect a great deal of training in medical terminology, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, medical report formatting, ethics and more. These are the basic things you will need to know in order to work in medical transcription. Some of it is quite complex, and it takes time to learn it all.

You’ll also do a number of hours of real doctor dictation in any good program. This is one of the most important parts. You can know the terminology, but if you haven’t transcribed it, you don’t realize how different it can all sound depending on how the doctor says it.

It’s not just about accents, although that certainly plays a role. Doctors usually speak quickly when doing their dictation. They want to get it out of their way. They may also eat as they dictate, drive a car, and so forth. The dictation is not always their only focus at the moment. It takes a lot of practice to not only understand what they’re saying, but to transcribe it accurately and quickly.

Just a few hours will not be enough. The amount of practice needed may seem excessive when you first start, but it’s necessary. This is the major skill you bring to the job, and it’s why nurses and other medical professionals often still need to take classes in order to become medical transcriptionists themselves.

How long the course is expected to take overall matters too. It shouldn’t be short. A mere eight weeks really isn’t enough, not by the time you add in the hours needed to really practice transcribing. You can learn a lot in that time, but you won’t have learned enough. Expect a minimum of four months, but accept that a self paced course may well take you nine months or even a year to complete. That’s not at all unusual.

Cost matters to most of us as well. A good course is not cheap. $1800 isn’t unusual, and many courses cost more. This is not something to go too cheap with. Just remember that the quality of training you get will help to pay back the investment you make in your training. Work hard in your classes, find that first job, and you’ll earn it back in a reasonable time period. It’s still less than the cost of many colleges for a year.

Finally, make sure you check the reputation of the school in the medical transcription field. It doesn’t matter if they’re great elsewhere – how well will you be trained for the job you’re after? You want the best you can find in that area.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Where Are the Certified Online Courses to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

February 25, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Figuring out how to become a medical transcriptionist can be a bit confusing. Sometimes people are surprised to find out that they have to pay for training to get into this career. Once they get past that, the next question is very natural. Where are the certified online courses to become a medical transcriptionist?

A search online can add to the confusion. There are a number of schools out there, and of course they’re all trying to look good to you. Probably several are good, but you don’t know how to check them to see if they’re certified or otherwise a good program to teach you how to become a medical transcriptionist.

Certification isn’t precisely what you’re looking for, however. It’s too easy for a course to say that it’s certified or accredited in this way or that. I much prefer to suggest that you consider AHDI Approval, as it is entirely about the medical transcription training course, not about anything else the school may teach. AHDI considers several factors to determine whether a medical transcription training course is offering the right sort of training to prepare students to work in medical transcription.

It’s pretty easy to find out which courses have this. They’re listed on the AHDI website.

You can check the websites of different schools and request printed information from them. This can help you to figure out which one is going to work out well for you. You’ll want to balance the quality of the course with what you can afford to pay for it. These kinds of courses aren’t precisely cheap, but when you compare them to what you could be earning once you start working as a medical transcriptionist, they usually aren’t all that unreasonable. It’s an investment in your career.

As with any other sort of investment, make sure you do so wisely. Don’t feel you have to go for the first online course you hear about. It might be the right one for you, but it might not be. It is possible to choose a school that advertises its courses well but doesn’t really give you the training you need to do the work and doesn’t have the trust of potential employers to help you get past the experience requirements. The time you spend doing a touch of research on your options will help you to avoid such mistakes.

Just remember that it’s not certification as such that makes an online course worth taking. It’s whether or not you’re likely to gain the skills you need to work as a medical transcriptionist that matters.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Can You Get Your Medical Transcriptionist Certificate Online?

February 24, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

The one problem with trying to start your career in medical transcription is having to get the training required. Going back to school isn’t convenient for a lot of people. There are too many things you have to do in your life, and working school into that is difficult. This is why it’s a great idea to get your medical transcriptionist certificate online.

To make things very clear right from the start, this is not about becoming a Certified Medical Transcriptionist, or CMT. That’s entirely different from getting a certificate from an online training course. You can only get your CMT after a minimum of two years of experience in acute care medical transcription, and only through AHDI.

A lot of schools offer a certificate to show you’ve completed your course. Too often students and graduates assume that this makes them a CMT, but it doesn’t. Employers know that and you’re better off if you know that too. A certificate from a school is more like a diploma. It just says you completed the coursework required to graduate.

There are a few good training programs for medical transcription you can take online. You want to take a good look at the program you’re considering because there’s also a lot of very poor quality programs out there. There’s no point wasting time or money on a course that won’t give you the training you need to become a medical transcriptionist, no matter what they say about the certificate they give you after.

A good training program will have a good reputation with medical transcription employers. The coursework will be challenging, teaching you quite a bit of medical terminology and other information you will need to know in order to transcribe. It will also include many hours of real doctor dictation for you to practice on, building up your skills as a medical transcriptionist.

You should plan on taking six months or more to complete the training. A few will finish sooner, maybe as little as four months, but it depends on how quickly you pick up the information and how much time you can dedicate to your training. Some take nine months, others over a year.

On the plus side, most online medical transcriptionist training programs are self paced. If you need to take a bit more time or a bit less, you can do it. So long as you learn the material and gain the skills, you’ll be in good shape.

Self paced training programs are great when you have work or other obligations. You can work around them, study nights, study early mornings, whatever works for you. No parking hassle to get to class either. You work on assignments on your own schedule and contact teachers as you need them.

There are risks to any sort of self paced online training programs, beyond just the possibility of quality issues. You’re the one responsible for scheduling your work. If you don’t get your coursework done in a reasonable time frame, you can run out of what the school allows for the entire course to be completed. That’s the big limit to these types of courses, but it’s usually quite reasonable and very possible for any committed student to finish the training. Get it done and you’re have your medical transcriptionist certificate, diploma or whatever you care to call it.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Which Online School Is Best for a Medical Transcriptionist Diploma?

February 23, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

If you want to get into medical transcription, you’re going to need to get an education in it first. There’s a lot you have to know, and it’s a challenging career. You want to find the best online school to get your medical transcriptionist diploma.

There are several good choices available to future online medical transcription students. Once you know how to tell which are good, you can pick from them and decide which is the best for you.

The most important thing you get from an online school is not your medical transcriptionist diploma. It’s the skills to work as a medical transcriptionist. If you don’t really develop those skills well, the diploma is nothing more than a piece of paper.

Also important is the reputation of the online school with potential employers. It doesn’t matter how dedicated a student you were or how well you learned to transcribe medical records, if employers have had too many bad experiences hiring graduates of a particular school your odds of getting a job at that company goes way down. You want to go to a school that has the trust of many employers.

The program should teach you many of the basics first, such as medical terminology, anatomy, physiology and so forth. You can’t rely on a spell checker too much when you’re a medical transcriptionist, so all these things must be familiar, not just so that you spell them correctly, but so that you can hear the doctor say them and transcribe the report correctly. Many medical terms sound extremely similar to one another, and you must understand them well enough to catch the difference and to know if the doctor may have made a mistake in his dictation.

That’s only a part of what the school must teach you. They must also have you transcribe many hours of real doctor dictation for practice. This is where you learn how to put it all together into the medical record. You learn all about how to do this in the other parts of your training, but without a lot of practice you aren’t going to be prepared to do this in real life.

Cost has to be a factor for most of us. There aren’t many who can just pick a school with no thought to expense. There are very limited options for financial aid as a rule, since most programs don’t qualify for the usual financial aid programs.

You can just go with the most expensive school, but that’s not necessarily the best bet. Price isn’t everything. Make sure that if you go with an expensive school that the quality is worth the expense.

Don’t go for the cheapest either, although I would hope that would be obvious. It’s not cheap running a good online medical transcriptionist school. Too cheap means the school is probably lacking in some way.

Many schools will offer some sort of payment plan even if they don’t have other sorts of financial aid. There may also be benefits to paying the entire expense at once. Figure out what will work for you.

With some research into these factors you should be able to narrow down the field and pick the right online medical transcriptionist school for your needs. Once you’ve signed up, it’s up to you to make it through the classes and become a medical transcriptionist.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Are There Any Free Medical Transcription Courses Online?

February 20, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Free is such a pretty word to many people. Sometimes however, the results of getting something for free are pretty ugly. Free isn’t always worth it.

That’s the case with free medical transcriptionist courses online. They aren’t going to teach you medical transcription. Despite that initial claim of free, there’s probably an expense that you’ll lose as well.

Many supposed free courses don’t charge you for whatever training they say they’ll offer. They’ll charge you for software or something like that. It won’t be worth the money. Their free training won’t be worth the time you spend on it, because it won’t help you to get a real job later on. All in all, free medical transcriptionist courses are a huge waste of time, and possibly money.

Medical transcriptionist courses aren’t free for one very good reason. It takes a lot of time and effort to develop the course, and once it’s developed there are still teachers to pay. Someone has to be available to the students when they have questions.

Free also costs you in lack of quality. Odds are they aren’t going to teach you enough to become a medical transcriptionist, not by a long shot.

It’s not just the terminology or even the formatting. It’s learning how to transcribe. It takes hours of practice with real doctor dictation to prepare yourself for even an entry level medical transcription job. That’s not something a free course is going to provide.

Then there’s the matter of reputation. A medical transcriptionist must be extremely accurate in his or her work. That’s hard to judge in a freshly trained graduate of any program if the employer isn’t familiar with it. Testing only tells them so much. Employers prefer being able to trust the course you took to have trained you well. If they’re familiar with the reputation of that course, they’ll know if they can trust that or not.

Some free course that pops up online isn’t going to have that trust. It’s not going to build up a good reputation because it’s not going to teach you well enough. Providing quality training costs too much for free to be a viable business model. The time it takes to learn medical transcription is prohibitive as well. The model doesn’t hold up.

There’s one more way a free medical transcriptionist course can cost you. It can cost you wasted time in job hunting. How long are you going to have to job hunt when you don’t have the skills you’d hoped to get? How long will you waste time thinking you can get this when you haven’t been given good quality materials and a teacher to help you master transcription? What will it take to get an employer to take a chance on you?

That costs you whatever income you could have been making after paying for a good course. The upfront cost of the training might just help you get into the career faster.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Where Can I Study Medical Transcription Online Quickly?

February 20, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

The need to study medical transcription before you can get a job as a medical transcriptionist can be frustrating, especially if you think that all you have to do is type up what the doctor says, or you feel you have a solid enough medical background that you know enough to plunge straight into your career. There’s certainly a kernel of truth to such perspectives, but that doesn’t change the need to learn more than you think you need to. The larger part of being a medical transcriptionist is more complex than many others realize.

That doesn’t mean you’re entirely wrong to want to study medical transcription online quickly. If you can handle the speed and really learn everything a medical transcriptionist needs to learn, go for it. But don’t take a course saying you only need eight weeks or something. Take a self paced online medical transcriptionist course and see how long it takes you.

If you can finish it quickly and do the work well, wonderful! Most times it will still take at least four months to complete a self paced course, but at least you aren’t having to wait for classmates to catch up with you, or for an instructor who won’t let you work ahead even when you’re ready to go. The parts you know you can go through quickly. The parts that are less familiar and more challenging you can take the time you need.

Your typical reputable medical transcription course online won’t promise you that you can finish it all that quickly. There’s a wide range of times that are considered normal in a good, self paced course. The fast students or ones with some medical background may finish in four months or so. Students with less time to work on their school work or who don’t pick up the skills so quickly may take nine months, a year or more to get it all done.

The beauty of self paced courses is that it doesn’t matter which sort of student you are, and if something slows you down for a little, as life has a way of doing, you can keep going as time permits. So long as you don’t go past the time frame allowed by the school for completing the course overall, you should be in good shape.

The simple truth is that some parts of the curriculum will take a significant amount of time. There’s only so much you can do about the amount of time required for transcription practice. It’s one of the biggest parts of the online course, and very time consuming. It’s a vital skill to your eventual success as a medical transcriptionist, and not one to be skimped on while you train, especially as it may relate to what you earn. Per line pay rates are quite common in medical transcription, and if you didn’t master the skill, you aren’t going to earn that much.

Remember, you’re training for a new career. You want to impress whichever employers you end up applying with. You won’t impress anyone if you rush through your training so fast that you don’t learn the skills a medical transcriptionist must have.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Which Online Colleges for Medical Transcription Are the Best Value for the Money?

February 19, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

No one wants to waste money on their education. You pay for college, you want to get something out of it. When it comes to learning medical transcription, however, not all colleges are worth it. Which online colleges for medical transcription give you the best value?

It takes a bit of research to find out. There are a few factors that will help you discover which colleges have a good reputation as a school and with employers. It’s that good reputation that will help you get your first medical transcriptionist job, combined with how well you do in your studies.

One way to check how employers feel about a college is to see if they regularly hire graduates from that college. Some will list employers that have hired their graduates on their sites, but you can also try contacting employers. Just remember that this does not guarantee that you will ever be offered a position with that employer, no matter how well you do in your studies. It also depends on if they’re hiring at the time and what your competition for the openings looks like.

The big national medical transcription services are some of the easiest employers to check with. They hire a lot more people, and so deal with a lot more graduates from whichever program you’re looking at.

The AHDI is another place to check. They have some colleges on their Approved list, which means the college offers what they consider to be a good training program. The college has gone through a review process with them and passed all the criteria, which go over course content, the inclusion of an experienced medical transcriptionist in the program, and other factors they believe go into making a college worth approving, and worthwhile for students to attend to learn medical transcription.

You should also consider whether the college allows you to go at your own pace, especially if the courses are offered online. Being able to go at your own pace is a huge help, especially if you’re working elsewhere at the same time. You can go faster or slower as your schedule permits. You don’t have to worry about getting to class on time.

You do have to make sure that you’re still getting the work done in a timely manner if you use a self paced training program. Go too slow and you can eventually run out of time. Colleges do not just keep you as a student until you’re done. There’s a time limit that should be plenty generous enough for the serious student, even if you work elsewhere at the same time. Set aside a couple hours several days a week at least, just as you would for a college class you would attend in person. If you aren’t doing any other work, try treating your studies as a full time job.

When you get right down to it, there are a few online colleges that will give you good value for your money. Even the best won’t give you good value unless you work at it. Don’t expect learning medical transcription to be a simple thing. It takes time and a lot of effort. Give yourself the time you need to really learn what they’re teaching you so that you make the most of your time and the money you’ve spent.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

How to Look Into Online Courses to Become a Medical Transcriptionist

February 17, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Taking an online course to become a medical transcriptionist is one of the best ways to get started in this industry. The challenge comes in figuring out which online courses are worth taking, and which should be dropped from consideration. All the schools do their best to sound appealing, but not every school is even close to worth it.

If you want to know which ones are worth it, you need to do a bit of investigating. There are a couple of ways you can find and choose a course.

Signing up for a medical transcriptionist course without doing your research is risky. The internet makes it very easy for someone to set up what looks like a good school when it’s really a one or two person operation, poorly developed training materials, and no record of successfully training students into medical transcriptionists that an employer would hire.

At the same time, there are a number of really great online courses available to medical transcription students. Many of the best medical transcription schools are 100% online. Online courses are great for teaching you how to do the work without direct supervision, and the self paced nature of many online courses means you can fit it into your schedule more easily than classes you have to attend in person.

Employers are a pretty good place to start. If potential employers regularly hire graduates from a particular program, you can pretty well assume they’re doing a good job of teaching. Employers are quick to note when a source of employees is more trouble than it’s worth.

You can also check with the AHDI. You don’t want the school to just be a member of AHDI, you want them to be one of the Approved schools that they list on their website. That means the program has been reviewed in terms of the training in medical transcription it gives. They don’t approve schools easily.

You can look through the resources the school itself makes available to potential students. They will of course make themselves look good, but you can tell a lot about the school’s offerings, such as if a student forum is available, if a payment plan is available, and how much help they’ll give you after graduation to find that first job.

Once you’ve done your research and found a really great medical transcription online course, there’s one more very important thing to remember. You absolutely must remember that the best training course online can do nothing without you. If you aren’t a dedicated, hardworking student, you’re never going to learn the skills you need in order to succeed as a medical transcriptionist.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Are a Medical Transcription Certificate and a Certified Medical Transcriptionist the Same Thing?

February 17, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

Medical transcription terminology can be confusing, and sometimes it starts as you begin learning about the industry. You research what it takes to become a medical transcriptionist and see terms such as Certified Medical Transcriptionist (CMT) and see schools offering a medical transcription certificate, and it’s easy to think they’re the same thing.

Problem is, they aren’t. Not remotely.

A certificate showing you completed your medical transcription training means nothing more than that you finished your training. Any school can give you that if they choose. It’s a little something to show what you’ve accomplished in your education.

Becoming a Certified Medical Transcriptionist (CMT) is entirely different. No school can give that title to you. You test to get your CMT through AHDI, and they’re the only ones who can legitimately offer that. You must have at least two years of acute care medical transcription experience or equivalent in order to take the test in the first place. A newly graduated student, no matter how well they’ve done in their studies, is not qualified or prepared for it.

That doesn’t mean there’s a problem with giving students a certificate of completion, so long as the school does not refer to it as making you a CMT. You can get a certificate of completion for a lot of things. It’s a not uncommon term. If they do make it sound as though you’d be a CMT after graduation, you know that you’ve found a school you can cross off the list for consideration.

If your school gives you a certificate of completion, it’s important that you don’t list yourself as a CMT on your resume. You aren’t one, and with your lack of experience, the employer you’re applying with will know it. Claiming that title when you not only haven’t taken the test but don’t have any experience would be a major mistake on a resume. Many medical terms can be very confusing if you don’t understand what they both mean, and it’s vital to your success as a medical transcriptionist that you not confuse them. Show an employer that you can’t keep “certificate of completion” apart from “Certified Medical Transcriptionist” and they’ll lose interest in you fast.

These kinds of issues are a part of why it’s so important to attend a high quality medical transcription school. If they’re misleading you about what you can claim on your resume after graduation, how much do you want to trust them to train you right? You’re much better off going with a school that employers trust. There’s not much point in going to school for it if you can’t get a job in the industry.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Do You Really Have to Attend a School to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

February 16, 2011 / Stephanie / Comments Off

You’ve heard about working as a medical transcriptionist, perhaps even at home, and you’re eager to get your career moving. You’re pretty confident about your typing skills and your ability to use them as a medical transcriptionist. Are you really going to have to spend a bunch of time in school to become a medical transcriptionist?

Probably, yes. Especially if you think a medical transcriptionist just types up what the doctor says. The job is just not as simple as that.

First and foremost, it’s hard to get into medical transcription without experience, never mind without training. It’s a career that demands near perfect accuracy. Going to school to become a medical transcriptionist will help you to build the skills and knowledge you will need to do the work.

Even nurses who want to go into this field are usually better off going to school first. It’s very different dealing with patients than it is transcribing doctor’s dictation. You can’t get by with almost knowing how to spell all the terminology. You must get it right.

Nurses and others with a medical background do have some advantages, as medical terminology, physiology, anatomy and pharmacology will be much more familiar. But a refresher won’t hurt, and if you choose a self paced online school you can work through the familiar parts more quickly. But nurses and other medical personnel will still need to learn how to transcribe, and that’s a skill that comes only with hours of practice.

Transcription itself can be extremely challenging. Doctors usually speak differently when they dictate. Many speak as fast as they can, to get the work out of their way. Others will eat or do other activities as they dictate. Then there are strong accents to deal with. The only thing that will help you to cope is a lot of practice. The best place to get this is through a medical transcriptionist school.

Learning to transcribe will be a huge help when you first become a medical transcriptionist. You’ll be faster at it than you would be if you’ve never transcribed before. If your job pays on production, you want every advantage you can get when it comes to speed and accuracy.

Unless you know someone who wants to hire you with no training and no experience, attending school will be a big help in getting that first job. Provided you attend a good one, of course. There are many schools that are not worth the time or expense to attend. There are others that are very much worth both time and expense for the quality of their training.

Going through a good medical transcription school and getting good grades on your work is one way you can show potential employers that you can do the work. Without some sort of proof that you’re a competent medical transcriptionist, most companies won’t give you or your resume a second look.

Get free information from Career Step about their online medical transcriptionist training.

Medical Transcription Basics

Medical transcription training and schooling tips

Author: Stephanie (page 3 of 9)

What Are the Best Medical Transcriptionist Online Classes Available?

Where Are the Certified Online Courses to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

Can You Get Your Medical Transcriptionist Certificate Online?

Which Online School Is Best for a Medical Transcriptionist Diploma?

Are There Any Free Medical Transcription Courses Online?

Where Can I Study Medical Transcription Online Quickly?

Which Online Colleges for Medical Transcription Are the Best Value for the Money?

How to Look Into Online Courses to Become a Medical Transcriptionist

Are a Medical Transcription Certificate and a Certified Medical Transcriptionist the Same Thing?

Do You Really Have to Attend a School to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?

Medical Transcription Resources

Choose Your Medical Transcriptionist Training

Top Medical Transcriptionist Training Articles