This blog is part of a series on transcription. If you haven’t read the other blogs in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all transcription blogs.
Do you have to go to school to become an MT? Absolutely. I have seen people try to worm, wiggle, and sneak past this requirement in every way imaginable. I have heard different variation of this strain for a long time: “I bought some books off eBay and read them, and then I bought some CDs that have medical dictation on them, and I’ve been practicing transcribing with those. I have been working hard on this. I should be able to get an MT job!”
I understand that people think that MT work is simply typing what you hear. In many ways though, what you’re hearing is a different language. To me, it’s akin to learning German or Russian: The words are so different and so technical, that they don’t resemble any of the normal everyday words of the English language. If you hear “etiocholanolone fever” you will have no idea if “etiocholanolone” is one word, or five. You’ll have no idea how to spell it, and no idea how to find it. There is such a vast pool of knowledge that you have to learn before you can easily understand and work with medical terminology, that studying a “few books” and typing a “few reports” will do almost nothing to help educate you in what you truly need to know in order to be an MT.
Even after you spend a year (or even two) studying medical transcription in school, you are still going to be learning when you start working. Every day for months, you will be looking up new words, and struggling to learn everything you need to know. After a year, that initial learning curve will level out some, but you will always be learning, because the medical field is always changing and growing.
There are federal student loans that can be taken out, to help pay for the cost of schooling, and most MT schools will offer some sort of scholarship to needy students, or small discount on the tuition cost. If there’s a will, there’s a way.
For people who want to make up their own courses by haphazardly piecing together books and audio CDs, I have to say: Take that time, and take that energy, and put it towards something that will reap good results. Otherwise, you are going to come to the end of a year of self-study, and be no closer to being an MT than you were before.
“But,” I can hear the protests now, “I am a LPN (or “I am an RN”)–surely I don’t have to go to school to become an MT like everyone else. I already know the terminology!”
To that I say: Read on!