Yeah, the profession of medical transcription is not just about good income and flexibility. It has its share of challenges. You may be lured by the benefits of the profession easily, but only the highly disciplined can survive and do well in the field. I don’t mean to scare you. My purpose is to prepare you for the challenges. You don’t want surprises thrown at you once you have joined the industry.

Here’s my take on what is challenging in the profession.

• Deadlines: The deadlines in medical transcription are far from being flexible, irrespective of the ‘flexible’ tag on the profession.  Deadlines are meant to be sacrosanct and more so in this field. You are required to turnaround records in 24 hours. And that’s the regular work. Some work requires you to deliver records in a matter of a few hours.
• Quality goals: Your productivity figures will not mean anything if the quality of your work is bad. The quality goals in the medical transcription work are extremely high with a required accuracy of 98 percent. And no, it doesn’t mean you are allowed errors. The profession has zero tolerance when it comes to critical errors. Critical errors are the ones that can impact the safety of a patient.
• Learning: The transcriptionist is required to continue updating his/her medical knowledge even after the training. Obsolete knowledge or ignorance about new development in the field of medicine can cause you to go wrong while transcribing medical records. And this you cannot afford. You have to spend time and effort on learning almost everyday.

There are several other things that can become challenging for an individual, but the above-mentioned are definitely the biggest ones.