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.
I just did a Q&A with Sheila on her thoughts on the MT world, and so I thought I would finish this off by letting her tell us about a typical day for her in the MT world.
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I typically start work around 8:30 in the morning. I try to work steadily for 3 hours with minimal breaks of no more than 5 minutes. This is not hard for me to do really. Once I get started it just starts to flow. Then I take a break for an hour for lunch. After that, I come back and work for an hour to an hour and a half. I have a daily line goal I work toward every day. I am working on adding to that goal as I get faster.
Sometimes I will work on the weekend if I am looking for extra cash for a vacation or Christmas or sometimes to help out when asked by the company to help with turnaround time. I have had to work weekends before to make up for a holiday that I didn’t work. Because I am an IC, I am required a certain line count, so I don’t get paid if I don’t work and I could lose my contract if I don’t meet my line requirements.
I have two accounts I work on any given day. I have a clinic account and an acute care account. The clinic account drives me crazy because it usually has very poor audio which really can slow me down. Also, that account has a few ESLs that are hard. I really enjoy the acute care account because it is interesting. The first company I worked for about killed me though. I worked for them for five months and had over 350 different dictators that I typed for. That was completely insane. Now with these two accounts, I get repeat dictators and it makes things much easier. I actually start to look forward to certain dictators. It is weird that it feels like you start to get to know the doctor somewhat when you hear them repeatedly. Some days I just want to jump through the screen and choke the idiot doctor who chose to dictate by the window that appears to be by the airport though!
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That’s it from Sheila. My many thanks to her for her time and willingness to be interviewed by me. If anyone has any other questions that they didn’t see covered here, feel free to leave them in the comments section or if you prefer to remain anonymous, send me an e-mail at Hava L {at} Families dot com. Don’t miss my next interview with Laura the QA gal!