I Love My Career
The day I started thinking of myself as a "real" MT was not the day I graduated from school (Seminole Community College's MT program); not when I started working as a part-time MT for a couple of orthopedic surgeons (one with a rather dramatic speech impediment that worsened as his work day grew longer, a subject for a blog entry all its own); and not the day when I met the owner of the only MT service I have ever worked with. The day I realized I was the "real thing," an MT in the full sense of the word, was on the third day transcribing a small surgical clinic account my MTSO had just gotten. It was sort of an out of body experience with a teensy-tiny "Nae" perched on my shoulder as I banged out the fifth or sixth colonoscopy in a row for that day. Half of me was focusing on how to get the new salt block to the pasture without help, the other half was focused on the dictator's words as he raced through a routine colonoscopy with normal findings as fast as he could so that (as he kept assuring the machine he addressed over and over as "transcriptionist") he "could manage to make his scheduled tee time after all." As I was transcribing ... "The scope was passed quite easily through the sigmoid into the descending colon, splenic flexure, transverse colon, hepatic flexure, ascending colon and cecum. Ileocecal valve was identified. Terminal ileum was entered for a few centimeters and showed no mucosal abnormalities" ... I remember watching my fingers move, seemingly by themselves, without my brain telling them what to do; no mental flipping of the pages of Dorland's to be sure I was using the right medical terminology, those words were just flowing onto the screen exactly the way the dictator wanted them, and that teensy Nae on my shoulder was doing some sort of Highland fling and shouting "look at that, I am really an MT!"
I do vividly recall that my cows, unlike the literate bovines of the cheese commercials, did not seem a bit impressed as I related this magnificent achievement to them later in the day. In fact those cows were all giving me the same blank look I would come to know well, the look my husband and even my best friend would give me when I attempted to explain to them what had happened and how I just "knew" I was now a real MT. That was the day I learned, painfully slowly, that unless someone is already an MT there is simply no hope they will ever truly understand how special the feeling of having finally arrived at full-fledged MT status really is.
If the 2007 Survey of Medical Transcriptionists (by Gary David, PhD, of Bentley College) is to be believed, the bulk of working MTs are middle-aged women who have, undoubtedly, been sitting in their chairs for many years, and no matter how much the advertising folks for the newly revamped AHDI try to gussy it up, those working MTs spend most of their working day repeatedly transcribing the same surgical procedures, discharge summaries, office visits, history and physicals until most of them, upon simply hearing the dictator's name or ID number, will know 95 percent of what is going to be dictated before the first sounds are even uttered. While it is true that there is always something unique, something new about each patient encounter, repetition and routine from the majority of what any MT encounters when transcribing daily, and it is that mind numbingly normal routine that made me sit down to think about that "real MT feeling" while reading through the MySpace web site for AHDI's "I Love My Career" video contest.
Although on the day I visited only one video had been entered, I admit that I am looking forward to seeing the ideas others will have for making the work of MT sound enticing to the 30-second sound-bite generation of today's work force ... how they will portray MT as something exciting ... sexy even. I don't mind telling y'all that I have spent some time thinking about what sort of video I would like to do myself.
My video would be pretty simple ... low budget, low tech ... 3 sets of bare legs, slowly strolling down a beach, waves barely washing over the toes and erasing those footprints as the camera pans toward the horizon. Sea gulls would be calling in the distance and a line of pelicans swooping across the waves. Then 3 sets of legs would stretch out on lounge chairs with laptops propped neatly on rolled-up beach towels. A Dorland's medical dictionary and a copy of the Saunders Pharmaceutical Word Book tossed casually at the end of one chair. The sound of the clickety-click-click of 3 keyboards racketing along. A camera shot of a cell phone held to an ear while a calm MT voice assures the client that she has just, minutes ago, uploaded the H&P that the surgeon was waiting on before the patient was prepped for the OR. A masculine arm extends a tray on which sit 3 tall glasses of lemonade (with little pink umbrellas for a bit of color contrast against the yellow drink) and a voice asking ... "why would anybody bring their job to the beach?" Then, as the camera pans slowly toward the distance showing the backside of the cabana boy walking away to sound of ZZ Top's "Legs" ... 3 voices answer at once, "because we can take this job anywhere we go, and, every now and then, there are benefits!"
The filming would have to be done on a cell phone and would be a bit shaky, but I think the light, tongue-in-cheek, touch would be a nice departure from the serious work MTs do without dwelling on the routine of transcribing the same words for the same dictator day after day. Perhaps it would appeal to a younger demographic than the one recruiters of MTs have traditionally recruited from.
Now all I have to do is successfully convince my daughter and my son's girlfriend (tanned, young legs look far better on camera than the varicose veins of middle age) into taking a ride to the beach with me, and somehow shanghai my son into performing the cabana boy duties (he is the only male around here with a firm tush). There may be a slight hitch to this plan once he figures out that his derriere is going to be immortalized for all sorts of MTs to look at, but perhaps I can dazzle him with assorted baked goods that incorporate chocolate and slip the picture release form to him while he is sitting there in a chocolate-induced haze.
Nae