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.
In my last blog, I mentioned that medical transcription companies like to hire full-time employees, and I wanted to clarify that statement further.
First off, I wanted to make it clear: You can get a job as a part-time medical transcriptionist. It will not be as easy as getting a job as a full-time MT, but it is possible. It’s like the high-speed vs dial-up Internet debate–the jobs are out there, it is possible for you to find one, it will just take more searching on your part.
I wanted to answer the question of “why” though, because I know that for a lot of people, that is going to be the very first thing out of these mouth when I say it’s harder to get a job as a part-timer vs trying to find full-time work. The reason is simple: Even if you graduate from one of the three schools I talked about on here, you’ve still got a whole lot to learn. The medical field is large, complicated, and constantly changing. Anyone who thinks that they have learned everything they need to know while in school is in for a big surprise when they finally start working. Not only does an MT have to keep up with the changing medical world, but they will also have to learn how to use the system the MT company provides, how to use a text expander, get used to the doctors they are assigned, etc. There is a very large and very steep learning curve for newbies in the MT field. It does not matter which school you graduate from, you will still have that learning curve.
So from a medical transcription company’s point of view, they can either hire an MT who will only be working part-time, and therefore will take a lot longer to get into a groove, soak up the knowledge needed, etc, or they can hire someone to work full-time who can apply themselves 8 hours a day to learning the information needed to be a competent MT. The person working full-time will grasp everything much quicker, and the costs of QA’ing (quality assurance) them will be lower.
Not to mention that many of the large MT companies require all of their MTs to use the computers given to them by the MT company and nothing else, so if they can give one computer away to one person working full-time vs two computes away to two people working part-time…Well, it’s really a no-brainer.
So if you’re looking for work as a part-time employee or IC, your best best is going to be a small company who gives you a lot of flexibility in your schedule and who actually hire part-timers. Skip applying for the huge fish in the sea like MedQuist and Spheris because although they will (usually) allow their employees to become part-time, there is always a waiting period of at least 6 months to get to that point (sometimes longer) and it isn’t guaranteed.
Make sure to check out my next blog, “Why Do You Want to Become a Medical Transcriptionist?” to see if the reasons you’re interested in this job field are the right ones.