Is Medical Transcription a Rewarding Career?

Medical transcription is an allied healthcare profession which involves listening to voice recordings of dictations by doctors and other healthcare practitioners and converting them into ready to use written reports.

On the face of it, the job may sound pretty mundane. But there's more to medical transcription than meets the eye. The profession is among the most rewarding allied healthcare occupations that one can choose. How? Here are some reasons:

1. Medical transcription is impactful:

Every day, doctors and other healthcare practitioners provide treatment, consultation, therapy, and diagnostic evaluations to tons of patients. Every visit and every procedure that takes place in a healthcare facility is duly recorded by the doctor in the form of a dictation. But these dictations, in their raw form, are hardly usable. Medical transcriptionists (MTs) are the people who transcribe these dictations into logical, readable and usable written reports.

But why is it important to convert raw dictations to written reports? Because these reports finally become a part of a patient's permanent medical record. It is these records that doctors keep referring to during the course of treating a patient. It is these records that are used to bill health insurance providers. It is these records that are used in legal battles. And it is these records that are stored in a hospital's database.

2. Medical transcription is challenging:

How impactful is a medical transcriptionist's work must have given you a clue about how challenging it can be. Accuracy is something MTs cannot take lightly because even the slightest of errors can prove disastrous.

This means that medical transcriptionists should know their job well and for that, they must have a very strong knowledge of medical terminology. They should be able to make sense of medical slangs and clinical abbreviations that doctors often use in their dictations.

The only place MTs can learn this and other skills that their job demands is a medical transcription school. It's possible to get medical transcription training online or in classroom. Training programs typically include coursework in medical terminology, anatomy, pharmacology, legal issues in healthcare documentation, English grammar and punctuation, keyboarding, etc.

3. Medical transcription offers variety:

One thing is certain, if you enjoy medical transcription, there will never be any dearth of diversity in work. Medical transcriptionists work on a variety of documents that include diagnostic test results, referral letters, operative reports, autopsy reports, consultation notes, discharge summaries, medical histories, as well as administrative material.

Medical transcriptionists can also choose from various employment settings. Some MTs work in hospitals and private practices, while others work for companies that provide medical transcription services to healthcare facilities. Many are self-employed.

4. Medical transcription is lucrative:

Medical transcriptionists may get paid on per hour or per line basis. They could also be paid annual salaries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wages of medical transcriptionists in 2010 was $32,900. The top 10 percent earned more than $46,220.^*

5. Medical transcription is flexible:

One of the biggest rewards of a career in medical transcription is the flexibility it offers. If they have formal training and experience, it's not very difficult to for medical transcriptionists to work from a home office. This provides MTs freedom from daily travel to and from office and the flexibility to work on a schedule that's convenient for them. They can also choose the amount of work they want to do and pick their clients.

So, these were the top five reasons that make medical transcription a rewarding career. If you also want to reap the rewards of working in this field, it may be well worth to find suitable medical transcription schools now!

Sources:

*bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/medical-transcriptionists.htm#tab-5