Productivity Crossover
My first couple weeks on the new account have gone pretty well, despite my paranoia about my ability to rise to the occasion. In fact, having gotten a peek into how well my peers are coping with the same move, I apparently am coping above average, which leads me to marvel at the state of the art and the apparent fact that not everyone is up to speed on how to maximize their productivity. Perhaps I've focused so much on Crappy Schools and ill-prepared grads that I've failed to notice the folks out there who are flying by the seat of their pants for years and have no idea how much easier their lives could be. I think there are still thousands of ICs who've hardly ventured out of the office and into cyberspace and still might not have a clue as to what's out there. It still amazes me how many are still talking about picking up cassette tapes, so obviously, the digital age has not necessarily reached the docs in the clinic world. In this era when productivity seems to trump all and wages continue to spiral downward, MTs are struggling not only to pay their bills, but to simply meet their quotas and hang onto their jobs. That so many are apparently doing so without benefit of tools that should be standard is amazing to me. Surely, there aren't MTs out there still transcribing on an actual typewriter, but it seems some have yet to realize the full benefits of word processing on a computer, beyond the fact they don't have to deal with carbon paper and Liquid Paper anymore. How many MTs reading this don't even know what an expander is? How many think that lousy autocorrect function in Word is the best option?
Make no mistake--expanders are crucial to making a living in transcription, but they also can unlock a whole new world to anyone else who lives at the keyboard. For those of you with no clue what I'm talking about, a brief summary: Say you have a phrase you have to type all the time. If it's awkward to do, all the better. In using an expander, you assign a couple keystrokes to trigger that phrase and instead of typing, say, "esophagogastroduodenoscopy" 20 times a day, you instead type "egdx," hit the spacebar, and voilà--there's your word. You don't have to use it for medical terms, and you can use it for words, phrases and entire reports. For an MT who transcribes operative reports all day, this can be a godsend. Op reports probably provide the greatest opportunity for savings because doctors tend to do routine surgeries the same way and motor through their dictations the same way each time. By typing "smithcs," for example, you might be able to type Dr. Smith's C-section that usually nets you 50 lines with a mere seven keystrokes. All you need to do then is read along as he dictates, change the occasional variable, and you're off to the next report. By creating combinations for every conceivable phrase you encounter, you can cope with any dictator that comes along--maybe not spitting out an entire report as fast as that C-section, but often cutting your keystrokes down by half or better. Type "tp" instead of "the patient," "tpw" for "the patient was, "tprt" for "the patient returns today," and on and on and on. In my world, if a dictator repeats a phrase twice in a report, I make a macro of it. For dictators who routinely do the same physical exam or review of systems, I make a macro for those.
The only caveat is that you need to have a system that works for YOUR brain, so that if you can't remember your macro, you can at least guess. Once you get 30,000 entries, you see the necessity of having a method to your madness. Maybe for two-word combinations, you always just use the first two letters of each. If there are multiple combinations that could have those initials, add a third from the second word. Maybe you always have to type headings. Instead of messing with the capslock and typing out "HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:" each time, you choose to use "hpih" (I use "h" to denote "headings) and there it appears, including spacing down to the next line. For my example above of "esophagogastroduodenoscopy," I use "egd" to type the acronym EGD and "egdx" for the expanded word. The point is that the possibilities are endless, and once you start thinking along these lines, you never stop finding new ways to incorporate this. I even have lists that pop up to type out entire mailing addresses so I never have to search for them again, or create a listing of physicians consulting or present for an operation. If you routinely transpose letters, you can also create entries to correct those for you on the fly, as in changing "teh" to "the."
Yes, Autocorrect is often folks' introduction to the expander, but it's limited and tends to bog down the WP app once you get so many entries. At that point, it's time to get serious about a standalone expander. For MTs, your employer often will require a specific one, and if you're an employee, they will most likely provide it to you. If you're a student, you don't necessarily want to invest in one before you know what will be required for your first job--and I don't recommend you even start using one until you've actually learned all that terminology and know how to type it without the cheat. That said, another bonus to using an expander is that once you've carefully created an entry, you never have to worry about a typo again; spellcheck is still crucial in general, but mainly for the things you're still typing out yourself. Unfortunately, having the expander doesn't mean everyone will figure out how to use it to their best advantage. So where to start? In my opinion, the best place for anyone is to head to Productivity Talk, a message board geared toward MTs, but chock full of information to help anyone, with everything from expander ideas to computer maintenance and safety issues to secrets from the reigning queen of MS Word. As a Mac user, I don't do Windoze and have sent many a relative to this site to answer their computer questions (usually some lame virus that's killed their peecee, another thing Mac users don't often encounter). The site has too many good tips to list, so do check them out. Another great place to start is a book called When the Name of the Game is Saving Keystrokes. Even now, I can pick up this book and find something I hadn't thought to try yet.
Regardless of your expander application, the basics are the same. The most common apps are Shorthand and Instant Text, but for my own use, I've used Spell Catcher for years, which has the added bonus of being friendly to Mac AND Windoze (perhaps the only remaining expander even available for Mac). Not only is it infinitely customizable (you can add something like 15 dictionaries, and it comes with foreign languages, legal, and medical terms, as well as a thesaurus, and you can even set your preferences for it to work only with certain applications, or to utilize specific dictionaries), but it's a fraction of the cost of the others. It is possible to convert your dictionary to import from one expander to another, so don't despair that if you change employers and they use a different one than you have, you'll have to start over from scratch. Perhaps the most important bit of advice to start off with is to make sure that you BACK UP your dictionary, and in multiple places. I've seen far too many MTs crying over the fact that their computer died and years' worth of shortcuts were lost. Whether you're an employee or an independent contractor, cover your hiney!
In a field fraught with repetitive stress injuries, I figure between my expander and my SoftFlex gloves, I have prevented a future of likely carpal tunnel syndrome. This is definitely something I think bears consideration outside the world of MT, as well. Given the general ignorance of people outside the MT world, I think someone's dropped the ball on marketing expanders in general. In retrospect, when I consider all the school work and clerical jobs I've done without one, I wonder how I ever managed. Whether you're an MT, a legal or general transcriptionist, a secretary, a student who has to write too many papers, or are just indulging yourself by writing the next great American novel, you definitely should acquaint yourself with expanders.