Paradigm Lost
Paradigm: noun: the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time. (
OneLook.com)
For as long as I've been working in the medical transcription field, the "generally accepted perspective" of the experienced MTs I've known has been that we do what we do because of a love for getting things right. Every comma is inserted with loving care, every correctly placed hyphen an object of pride. We have patted ourselves on the back for caring about the things that nobody else cares about, because we are the true guardians of the sanctity of the English language in the healthcare arena. The rest of the medical community can do what they wish, but we will stand firm, never wavering in our commitment to purity and correctness, never satisfied until every blank has been deciphered and every mangled syntax rescued.
As much as that paradigm appeals to me personally, little by little I've been forced to acknowledge that more and more MTs don't share it. The truth is that nowadays many MTs are asking the crucial question:
If nobody else cares about this stuff, why should we?
I'm discovering that the pat answers I've always had handy to answer that question just don't seem to carry as much weight as they used to---and I don't just mean with other people. I'm finding it harder and harder to convince myself or anyone else that sweating the small stuff is worth the time and effort.
In my opinion, the new paradigm for healthcare documentation is about producing a document that captures the essence of a patient encounter as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. Everybody else in the healthcare arena recognizes this as a fact of life, so I think it's time we as MTs acknowledge it also. Form is, if not totally irrelevant yet, at the very least only peripherally important. Every minute spent trying to justify the placement of a hyphen or a comma or semicolon is a minute lost to the hard-working MTs who are laboring under ever-tightening deadlines just to make a decent living. As much as we may grimace at an ESL physician's fractured grammar, truth is we don't have time to lovingly rearrange every mangled syntax into beautifully crafted prose. We just don't.
Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I believe quality is important, and I take pride in getting things right. But as much as we might like to think of ourselves as custom craftsmen, the truth is we work in a mass-production environment. We're building plain, boring, affordable family sedans, not one-of-a-kind luxury automobiles with all the options.
We can treasure our fond memories of the "good old days" as much as we choose, but we can't expect the next generation of MTs to share those warm fuzzies with us. Today's transcriptionists are more pragmatic than passionate, at least when it comes to language. Not only do they not revel in the delicious complexities of the rules of grammar, they view them as rigid and arcane, worthless relics from the distant past which serve only to slow down the flow of progress. Like it or not, this is how the business of medical transcription is going to get done in the 21st century.
The Paradigm is dead. Long live the Paradigm.