Medical transcriptionists
complete extensive coursework in preparation for their career.
Medical transcriptionists convert the voice dictation of medical professionals into typewritten documents, and do so with accuracy and speed. For years, medical transcriptionists, also known as MTs, prepared for their work through on-the-job training. Now they take formal coursework. Employers require either an associate's degree in the field or certification through a vocational school, community college, or an accredited distance-learning program. Courses are geared to positioning the MT to provide effective support in the complex documentation of medical information.
Medical
The foundation of an MT's training is in medical matters. Their studies include anatomy, biology, drugs, medical instruments and medical language. Some understanding of how a physician diagnoses a patient and determines treatment is also required. Medical transcriptionists are trained to spot discrepancies in dictation, such as drug dosages, as well as abnormalities in medical procedures and whether a patient's treatment has been fully documented. MTs also must be prepared to deal with such factors in dictation as dialects and accents.
Medicolegal
An MT's studies also cover how specific medical issues related to the typed medical document can have legal ramifications. An emphasis is placed on the confidentiality of a patient's medical records through education in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which was passed by Congress in 1996 to ensure patient privacy. MTs also learn about safety issues and the legal impacts that could result from mistakes in a chart.
English Skills
English grammar, punctuation, spelling, context and usage are part of a medical transcriptionist's education. The MT is trained to edit a medical professional's dictation into correct, formal standard English while preserving the dictator's original meaning. Challenges that the MT is trained to address include dictation that is done too quickly, in a low voice or in environments with loud background noise that drowns out parts of the dictation.
Computers
Keyboarding, basic computer operations, and troubleshooting are a part of the MT's curriculum as well. The computer is the primary work tool of the medical transcriptionist, who must have an overall understanding of use it for maximum productivity. Some schools are now including speech recognition as a subject, anticipating its wider use in the future.
Applications
An MT's education consists of practical application as well as theory. Toward the end of their schooling, they type real-life dictations over and over again. The field of medical transcription has its own style guide, the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity's "Book of Style." MTs are required to learn this style and apply it to the documents that they type.
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