It Pays to Communicate!

A few months back, an MTE contacted me through Twitter.  She was understandably distraught over her productivity since the shift to speech recognition.   She stated that in the beginning she was excited about the change; like many career transcriptionists, she had begun to develop carpel tunnel syndrome.  The new role of Medical Transcription Editor seemed like the perfect opportunity to expand the length of her career. 

When the training period began, Christy* followed all of the advice her trainer offered.  She completed all of the practice modules, learned all the features, and the keyboard shortcuts.  After her first week of editing, she was disheartened by her productivity. She hadn’t performed nearly as well as she had expected to.  Assuming she needed more practice, she completed the training modules a second time.  Afterwards she continued to see very little difference in her productivity.

After we spoke, we scheduled a shadowing session.  During the shadowing session I watched her edit production work for approximately 45 minutes.  By the end of the session we pinpointed several problems, most of which were not related to her editing skill.  One of the biggest issues was related to auto rewind.  She still had the auto rewind settings the same as they were for traditional transcription work.  This is not necessary in the editing environment.  We also found that some of the account specifications were set up incorrectly.  The drafts she received contained a lot of abbreviations.  Being that she was familiar with her account, she knew that most abbreviations were not allowed and made the appropriate changes.  What she did not know is that this is not a recognition error.  This is an error in the account specifications.   This error can be corrected on all future drafts.  For an account manager, this change is as easy as clicking a button.  While I was able to give Christy constructive editing advice, I was also able to use our session to take valuable feedback to her account manager.  Her manager made the necessary changes; therefore our session benefited her coworkers as well.  Today, Christy is performing as she expected and has also taken on the role as mentor for her fellow MTEs.

The moral of the story is, do not be afraid to voice your concerns.  If you feel like you are running against a brick wall, you just might be! Talk to your managers, talk to your trainers, talk to us.  We are all here to help.

 We love hearing from you! If you have questions, comments, or a concern of your own leave us an anonymous comment.  Remember, no mention of company names  🙂

 *Name has been changed for confidentiality