Medical Transcriptionist

Since the beginning of medicine science, there were a lot of important data which was needed to be collected, written and kept for upcoming generations. After the technology boom in the 20th century, a new occupation had been „invented“ and it is called medical transcriptionist. In this article, we are going to  find out, who is a medical transcriptionist, what capabilities does he need to have and how to become one of the key screws in the healthcare industry.

Basically, medical transcriptionist is a person who is responsible for collecting data from a patient‘s treatment history. He needs to write down what the doctor says and to convert it in to an electronic format. Sometimes, the medical transcriptionist has the role of a stenographer and needs to write down the doctor‘s words on the spot but more often he has a recorded audio or video file and converts it to a text. Basically, he does the same job as every other transcriptionist. You might ask why he is different from others then and has a full article dedicated to him? Well, a medical transcriptionist needs to have some unique capabilities and the most important of them is knowledge of medical terminology. Other crucial aspect is capability to: sort, check, count and verify numbers with impeccable accuracy. So, if you want to become a medical transcriptionist, you need to be good at math and be used to medical terminology.

I do not personally know how to become good at counting numbers but you definitely can learn all the other skills which medical transcriptionist needs to have. How? Well, there are a few possible ways to learn everything in case you decided to specialize in the healthcare industry: you can take online courses, community college, high school night courses or learn everything on the spot when working for free in the doctor‘s office or hospital with a more experienced transcriptionist. However, usually hospitals require a diploma that states graduation of some kind of courses. It is best to take some kind of training and then practice in a hospital for free – in this case you will later be a very high–ranked candidate when searching for a real job.

Hopefully, now you are able to understand who is a medical transcriptionist, what he does, why he is different from other transcriptionists and if you decided to become one, you will know what to do. And for the last time – this occupation is really important – we all know that it is better to read the doctor‘s advice in an electronic format than to read his illegible handwriting.