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Medical Transcriptionist
Transcribing dictated medical reports and other relevant patient information to a written document is crucial to patient care. Your accuracy and attention to detail helps reduce medical errors, ensures continuity of care, and provides a reliable record for statistical reports, legal protection, and accurate billing.
You listen on a headset to dictated recordings made by physicians or other healthcare professionals and key the text into a computer or word processor to produce documents including medical histories and reports, and diagnostic imaging studies. To create accurate transcriptions that comply with required standards for medical records, you need to be able to translate medical jargon and medical abbreviations, and understand medical terminology, diagnostic procedures, medical treatments and assessments.
While traditional transcriptions are the norm in this field, speech recognition technology is growing in popularity, which translates sounds into text that you then format, edit, and check for consistency. As this technology becomes more accurate and sophisticated, it’s likely to be more widely used.
Baker’s small class sizes and hands-on training will enable you to develop the foundation you need in understanding medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, radiology, and laboratory data, and sharpen your listening, grammar, and typing skills.
Career Facts
- The average annual wage for Medical Transcriptionists is $33,350.
- Job growth is projected at 11 percent from 2008 to 2018, about as fast as the average. Opportunities will be best for those who are certified, and growth will expand as the baby boom generation ages and requires more medical care.
- While most Medical Transcriptionists work in hospitals and physicians’ offices, others work in medical and diagnostic laboratories, outpatient care centers, audiologists’ offices, and offices of physical, occupational, and speech therapists.
- Many medical transcriptionists telecommute from home-based offices.
- Typically, the work week is 40-hours, but some Medical Transcriptionists work on-call, part-time, evenings, or weekends.
- Advancing in this field is often through promotion to a supervisory position, or consulting, teaching, or owning a medical transcription business. With additional education and training, you can specialize in medical records administration or in medical coding.
Programs
- Certificate
Want to get the ball rolling?
Everything about our college is aimed at getting you the job you want in the shortest time possible — from our affordable tuition, to how we choose our programs, to our small class sizes, and flexible class schedules.
Discover what Baker can do for your future. Schedule a visit or enroll online today.
