For about eight years I did medical transcription and bookkeeping for a group of 8 very busy general surgeons. When I got the job, I had no experience and had to learn as fast as possible. It was a pretty stressful, demanding job, but I loved the people I worked with and was glad to do my share on making sure we took good care of patients.
I had to ‘teach’ my doctors to realize that my job took a bit of skill. At one point, they were flirting with the idea that they would use special equipment where they could simply dictate their notes and the equipment would provide a copy for the patients’ charts.
They told me that ‘all I had to do was type what they said.‘ So I did that for two full days so that I could do transcription for all of them. I provided two copies – one for THEM to review and a second that went into the chart. At the end of the two days, they were begging me to NOT type what they said, realizing that they made mistakes when they were tired and distracted and needed someone with a head to ‘translate’ their words, rather than simply type them. A couple of them actually tried one of the new gadgets – quickly giving it up as the gadget typed gibberish, not understanding much of what they said. :0)
Sometimes what the docs said made me laugh out loud. I began to keep a document just for me to enjoy, recording their ‘bloopers.’ When I left after 8 years, I gave each of them the printed out document. I could hear them laughing all the way down the hall. Here is a sample:
- “It was recommended that she get manual anagrams…”
- “It hurts every time she has a bowel movement in her lower abdomen.”
- “Enclosed is a copy of the path report showing the lesion on Mr. ___’s buttock that I removed on 10/23/95 in the office was benign.”
- “On digital examination, there is no perianal region.”
- “She can place her head on her sternum without pain.”
- “These are office fixations — fictations — from…”
- “Following that, we can to annual, every other year mammograms.”
- “She is certainly not just a typical internal hemorrhoid.”
- “Send him a copy of ‘this blue thing’ that’s the first two pages under the diagnostic testing ‘stuff’ that has the most recent report.”
- “Both breasts are inverted.”
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