Changes....Changes...�You�re so lucky to be working at home!� How many times have we heard that phrase from family, friends, and acquaintances?Oh, yes, we�re really lucky to be working at home! We really are. Working from home, one is not required to have a �work wardrobe.� We don�t have to be ensnared in �office politics.� We don�t have to plan for brown bagging or buying lunch. We conserve auto gasoline, tires, and our car insurance can be rated as �pleasure use.� We savor the time normally spent in a daily commute to and from and use that valuable time for other important things. We don�t have to worry about road conditions or foul weather. But to those who regularly beat the bricks to punch a time clock 40 hours a week, little do they realize just how much self-discipline it takes to work at home, and that there are trade-offs. And some people think that just because we are lucky enough to work from home, we really aren�t working a REAL job, anyway.Okay, so we don�t have co-workers stopping by our desks or hanging around the water fountain for friendly chats, but we do contend with doorbells, door-to-door recruiters/sales people, kids, pets, or other family members (crying, laughing, whining, nagging, fighting, shoving), neighbors (loud radios, home improvement hammering, lawn mowers), telephone calls (�thought I�d call because I�m on my lunch hour, or I was bored and we haven�t talked in ages whatcha-been-up-to-lately?�), among other things. And we contend with solitude.Some of us, who once worked in Medical Records in a hospital, really do miss looking at all those good-looking doctors with their occasional friendly banter and exchanges, and the scent of very expensive aftershave hugging their lab coats. Some of us really do miss our lunch buddies, the office parties, even greeting others on elevators, and that particular �smell� of hospitals - antiseptics and sterility and that certain aroma of oversteamed institutional food emanating from the cafeteria. But above all, we miss that certain �prestige� which comes with being associated as an employee of a major health care center.Now that we work from home, we are anonymous. We are only connected to the marvelous world of medicine and healing and saving lives by a mere modem or phone line. No doctors, nurses, or patients really know we exist anymore. Do they? Solitude. Anonymity. A number. A work-at-home statistic. And as such, if we forget the importance of what we do or tend to equate our own self-worth and the quality of work we produce, with our former workplace interaction with other health care professionals � we can start losing focus about what our real purpose is as Medical Transcriptionists!What is our purpose? Is it to make lines, to make money? Is it to help the service we work for to grow and become successful? Well, yes and no.The OTs (old-timers) in this MT business, the ones who have worked in a hospital (they call us �seasoned� to be polite), can relate to working odd hours and covering shifts. We�ve all pulled �doubles� and we�ve all worked the graveyard shift, we�ve worked weekends, holidays, or filled in when the Medical Records Department was �short-handed.� We remember the echoes of empty hospital hallways in the middle of the night, of seeing that same janitor with the big push broom, humming softly to himself, shoving green sawdust around the corridors, the startling �clatter� of someone in the cafeteria dropping a tray of dishes jolting the silence of midnight hours, the distant moan of an ambulance pulling into the ER, and of seeing a surgeon donned in scrubs, surgical face mask dangling from his neck, shoulders stooped, head bowed, staring at the floor tiles as he walked, weary, lost in private thoughts about the patient who just flat-lined on the OR table. �Hi, Doctor,� we would whisper as we passed, and he would nod.Ask any OT MT and they will tell you, we didn�t dare leave the Medical Transcription Department short-handed. We juggled our lives around whatever shift we were called upon to work, and we made other arrangements in times of personal crisis, just so we could be of service to the patients and doctors who needed our transcription skills � we were dependable. No STATs hung in the tank for hours waiting to be transcribed � because there was always one of us quick to grab that STAT or answer the phone, transcribe it, and call the floor to let them know it was on the way up in the �tube.� No patient was left waiting in the holding area for surgery, or worse yet � on the OR table anesthetized � their procedure on hold before it was begun - the H&P dictated, but not on the chart � because we OT MTs saw to it that it was typed as fast as it was dictated, transcribed correctly, and made sure that report was on its way, even if we had to hand deliver it to OR ourselves!We took our jobs seriously, realizing that our skills and dedication were required to get dictated information on patient charts in a timely fashion, knowing that sometimes the very wheels and inner workings of the hospital turned on the very documents we transcribed. We had our sense of pride, after all. And besides, who wanted to be the target of an irate surgeon�s verbal blast because we slouched on our jobs or didn�t care if we were holding things up! Surgeons can get really uptight.But more than fear of a potential altercation with a surgeon, or someone going to the administrator accusing us of horrid work ethics, more than fear of potential loss of our livelihoods if we messed up and goofed off, more than anything else, we possessed dedication! We realized the importance of our profession and that what we did was necessary and vital to patient care. We played just as much of an important role in patient care as any nurse or other member of the health care team. And we knew it.So, yes, some of us do miss the hospital setting and we have made the trade-off for our seclusion and the comfort of working at home. But just because we are no longer inside the institution doesn�t mean we aren�t part of the institution and a necessary part of patient care! We may be physically separated by thousands of miles and our only umbilical cord to that hospital or doctor or patient is a modem, but that fact doesn�t diminish the importance, the necessity, and dignity of what we do as MTs. We are still the life line of medical records communication!Imagine yourself or your loved one as a patient visiting the ER with a life- threatening accident, only to find there is not a doctor in the house! By the same token, who would dream of a hospital operating without someone available to type the dictations? If no one shows up for the shift or the holiday, someone�s head is guaranteed to roll! Someone must be responsible! �Here is a patient waiting to be transferred to a higher care facility, but there is no one to type the Discharge Summary. A critical heart patient is awaiting surgery, but there is no one available to type the H&P! How unthinkable!So, getting back to our purpose as Medical Transcriptionists: If we are production MTs, is it just about producing lines and making money?We may be employed by a transcription service now and paid by keystrokes or lines, but the principles are the same - when we don�t cover our shifts and when we aren�t dependable, we are letting down the health care team! And it�s not primarily our company we are letting down. We are also letting down our fellow co-workers. Because if we lose the account due to not meeting the contracted turnaround times or if we concern ourselves more with producing lines rather than quality or accuracy, we risk losing not only our own livelihood, but that of our co-workers who type on the same account!But even more important � those patients, those families of patients, that hospital, those doctors, and even the ancillary health care support team at that faraway hospital � they are depending on us even though we may never look into their eyes and they probably will never look into ours. We may never hear a �thank you� or an �atta-girl, great job� for going the extra mile, we may never hear the moan of the ambulance pulling into the ER in the middle of the night at that hospital, we may never have to run a STAT report to surgery, and we may remain anonymous in our solitude working at home without �prestige,� but we are needed nevertheless. And lives depend on us!Copyright March 2005 - Rosemarie @ http://www.mt-stuff.comPlease feel free to print and distribute any of the reports from this web site. My only requirement is that you give credit to this web site by placing the referral note below back to this site:
Copyright 2005-2009, Copied with Permission from the web site,
"Patients and Medical Transcription" at http://www.mt-stuff.com
If you do use these sample reports for students or classes, please let me know. My goal for this web site is to mentor future MTs to carry on our professional craft and legacy; I would like to know I helped in some small way to achieve that goal.
Thank you and May God Bless You,
Rosemarie  
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