Online Medical Transcription Course? The Truth.
Should you take an Online Medical Transcription Course?
The question has at least 2 right answers... depending on YOU!
The answers are:
Yes, if you want a career that can be completely home
based and let you earn up to $30,000 per year (or more)!
No, if it's the WRONG career move for you.
If it's the WRONG move, then taking an Online Medical
Transcription Course (or off line for that matter)
If you're NOT cut out to be a medical transcriptionist, you
could invest $4,000 in books, software, and training (not to
mention a brand new computer) and never make a penny doing
medical transcription.
So, for better or for worse, I'm going to try to tell you how to
decide if an Online Medical Transcription Course is right
for you.
>From our experience, your choice in an Online Medical
Transcription Course should be based on the credentials of
the owners of the school.
There are many Medical Transcription schools online and off line
that turn out a completely inferior transcriptionist.
In other words, such schools are good at taking your
money but not producing qualified trainees.
When Renee chose a school, she chose one where the owners
conducted a free orientation at our local community college.
Even though the couse was entirely online, it was sponsored by
the community college.
Community colleges tend to be so "image conscious" we were sure
they'd never sponsor anything remotely "interesting" or
"relevant" to the work at home field if the program weren't
entirely legitimate. In fact we later learned this program was
approved for retraining people who'd lost factory jobs. Is your
school state approved for training workers?.
So when the owners were endorsed by working with our community
college, we were fairly certain their Online Medical
Transcription Course was "for real". If you're just taking a
course without such a local endorsement, you may want to
investigate DOUBLY HARD.
But there's more to this. A local community college can be
wrong. We also suggest going to a school where the owners RAN A
REAL MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION BUSINESS... preferably one contracted
with a hospital or other large clients with a variety of medical
specialities.
It's one thing to type for a single, slow speaking, courteous
physician in one specialty. It's another thing entirely to type
for 50 doctors from New York City who come from 10 different
countries and represent 20 different specialties!
Rest assured though that the owner of an Online Medical
Transcription Course who served large multi-specialty
practices will know how to produce competent transcriptionists
who can live anywhere, work over a DSL line, and make a good
living. If you hope to do the same, you need THAT kind of
training and NOTHING LESS!
The owners of Renee's school had the air of professionalism
about them. They didn't dodge questions. They had plenty of "war
stories" about the field and were honest about the earnings
potential.
This leads me to another point. If a school says you can make
$100,000 per year easily... run in the opposite direction as
fast as you can.
To be safe, "on average" according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, medical transcriptionists earn around $30,000 per
year.
Some will earn much more... if they have exceptional typing
speed, exceptional hearing, and exceptional desire. Our owners
had some transcriptionists who earned $50,000 to $100,000
but that wasn't the norm. Most just wanted a nice, stable income
with a certain amount of flexibility.
While it's ok for schools to use their "in house" text books,
for the most part, the texts studied and software used should be
"off the shelf" commercial grade software and recognized medical
texts. In the real world, you will need to upgrade software get
new books as new medicines come out, etc. You can't rely on any
single school to be expert in all the fields you'll need to
master as a transcriptionist so - like a college - a great
Online Medical Transcription Course should show you were
to get current expert resources in the "real world". Schools
only use 100% proprietary curriculum to maximize their own
profits. You should be able to buy your materials somewhere
besides the school to make sure you're getting the best deal
too.
Finally, an Online Medical Transcription Course that's
honest about the difficulty should do PRE-SCREENING of
applicants.
Orientations, pre-study assessments, sample lessons etc. should
be required.
Why? Medical Transcription requires as much pure knowledge as
any other medical field. One complaint my wife heard was a
fellow student saying "I thought I'd just be typing, not have to
go to medical school!" But, really, it's like going to medical
school for 3 to 12 months depending on whether you're full time
or part time and how hard you'll work. No slackers need show up!
This is not a nice slow paced typing job. It's a critical time
sensitive component of the medical field with quick, 99.9%
accuracy required! Many will not pass the test and you should
test yourself to see if you will LOVE doing this work or fail
out because you're really bored by it all! No school will turn
away people who insist on paying, but some effort should be made
to make people understand the magnitude of the task ahead!
Let's summarize: Legitimate Online Medical Transcription
Courses should have these characteristics:
1. Owners should have a state approved school if possible 2.
Owners should have real world experience in a multi-specialty
environment
3. Owners should have been frustrated with the
"average graduate" of other schools
4. Owners should be
honest about the earnings potential 5. Owners should use
recognized expert texts not just their own in house publications
6. Owners should prescreen applicants to screen out those who
will just be wasting their money.
Chuck & Renee Huckaby publish an page related to Online
Medical Transcription Course information that goes into
these and other issues regarding being a medical
transcriptionist more deeply and welcome your visit.