Home-based medical transcription can become monotonous and boring in the long run. The best way to keep yourself motivated is to keep yourself fit mentally and physically and making sure that your personal life never gets boring.

• Make a routine that has room not only for work but for everything you hold important in your life – your family, your domestic responsibilities, your own interests, and some rest.
• Don’t ignore your meals, your exercise, or your entertainment while meeting the deadlines. Being fit helps you remain focused and thus keeps you motivated.
• Don’t let work take over your life. Make time for your hobby even it for a couple of hours every week.
• Reward yourself on successful completion of big tasks. Pamper yourself. Spend time with your friends, watch a movie, play video games, watch your favorite sport, visit the spa, or go shopping.
• Spend quality time with your family. Your loved ones help ensure that you don’t get stressed. So, make it a point to spend a few hours with them every week.
• Plan vacations every few months. Plan for a couple of big vacations twice a year, and take smaller breaks once a month. Looking forward to these breaks from work will keep you focused and motivated.

You have to keep your heart and mind happy if you want to be motivated for work. So, make sure you never let your work take over your life.

If there are other ways you employ to keep yourself motivated, please share them with our readers.

Home-based medical transcription is not easy. Yes, we have told you that several times earlier. And yet we say that home-based medical transcription is good. It is good for those who work in a disciplined and responsible manner. Let me share with you a few tips to help you with your work at home.

• Make sure you have everything within reach. Check if you have the medical spell-checker, the medical abbreviation expander, the American Association for Medical Transcription (AAMT) style guide, and all reference materials available when you start work.
• Try to work only in your working hours. And don’t attend to household work or other things in those hours.
• Make time for exercise and meals in your daily routine. Don’t let your health take a backseat when you have work.
• Learn to say ‘no’ to work. Don’t take more work when you have your hands full. Taking too much work will not only take away your peace of mind but also put your goodwill at risk.
• Take logical breaks often. This will help you keep your mind at ease and prevent arbitrary breaks.
• Keep away from the television and social networking websites when you are working. Make it a point not to stray away when you have work pending.
• Inform your client/employer if you have received incomprehensible recordings consistently. Making them aware helps to reduce such occurrences in future.

To sum up, let me say that as a home-based medical transcriptionist, don’t prioritize home when you are working and don’t pull work beyond the designated hours.

How do you start a typical working day? How do you approach all those medical transcription deadlines? Each of us has a way of working that is different from other professionals. My ways work best for me but may not work at all with you and vice versa. However, there are certain things that all of us should include in the way we approach our medical transcription work.

When it comes to flagging medical documents, we cannot work with our own rules. The thumb rule is to flag appropriately and responsibly. Flagging is required when a document has some information missing in it. Sometimes, however, people flag documents because they are reluctant to research. Then again, there are those times when a genuine flagging case is ignored. As a medical transcriptionist, you have got to avoid both such occurrences or you will end up ruining your work as well as your goodwill.

Working with the same kind of information again and again makes us experts to an extent. And we start guessing while creating healthcare documents. Guessing is a sin when you are creating something that has the power to impact the safety of patients. Also, you stand to lose your credibility as a medical transcriptionist. Even if your guess does not put someone at a health risk, your guessed information can cause problems in claiming insurance.

You are likely to come across incomprehensible recordings some time or the other. However, if you are receiving them inconsistently, there is something wrong. You have got to let the doctors know that they are sending you poor dictations. I know, it’s easier said than done. But letting them know is much better than ruining the records and spoiling your time and credibility.

If there is anything else you would like to add to these tips, feel free to share it with us.

The medical transcription resume makes that first impression in front of potential employers. Is your resume good enough to impress them? Here are a few tips to help you create the perfect resume.

Your word processor has some resume templates to make your job easy. Use them. Creating a resume from scratch will not only waste your time and take a lot of effort, but also make your resume look unprofessional. So, be smart and use all available aids.

If you are a medical transcription fresher, include the hours of dictation when you mention your medical transcription training. And if you have experience, make sure the kind of work you have done so far. This will establish your proficiency.

Mention your transcription skills such as your typing speed, typing accuracy, and transcription accuracy.

Include details of your achievements in the medical transcription field as well as in other fields. Your achievements tell a lot about your dedication; this makes a good impression on your potential employer.

Include references of your previous employers/clients. Make sure the contact information of the references is correct. Let your references know that they are a part of your resume.

Make sure the contact details of your references and yours are correct.

Perform grammar and spelling checks. Use the built-in grammar-checker and spell-checker of your word processor.

Review the resume thoroughly. You should review it not only for accuracy of information but also for grammar and spellings. The spell-checker may miss out on some obvious errors.

Ask someone else to review your resume. Getting another perspective on your resume helps find errors that you may have overlooked.

We wish you all the luck for your medical transcription career!

Whether you are a home-based medical transcriptionist or any other professional working from home, one of the factors driving you towards home-based work must have been flexibility. So, how flexible are your work hours? Do you have a routine or do you prefer to work at your will?

Home has comfort but it is really not ideal has a workplace; it brings with it distractions and responsibilities, both domestic and social. It is very easy to get distracted while working from home. You have to be really disciplined. Here are a few tips that you can use to avoid distractions.

Don’t turn on the television. TV can be a big addiction even if there is nothing worth watching. You don’t even realize the amount of time you waste surfing channels and waiting for your favorite program to start. Don’t turn on the TV until you have finished work for the day.

Don’t attend to domestic chores until you have finished your work. Do not let domestic worries trouble you at work. Treat your home-office as an actual office from where you cannot attend to your household responsibilities.

Let family and friends know that you work from home; inform them of your working hours. Let your children know that you are working, and inform them of the time you plan to take breaks.

Close all e-mail clients and networking websites during work hours. They give you company when you work in isolation. However, they take over your life if you are not careful. You can postpone all sorts of social networking till you have finished your work.

While it is important that you take breaks between work in order to avoid back pain, stress, and fatigue, getting up too often can ruin your work. Avoid getting up in the middle of a task. Take only logical breaks.

When you decide to become a home-based medical transcriptionist, it is expected that you understand both the pros and cons of your decision. However, many transcriptionists give up soon and take up regular jobs. If you don’t want to be one of them, here’s what you need to do.

Maintain your office space: A dedicated home office is the most important thing if you want to set up a home-based medical transcription business. You cannot start a medical transcription career from home, let alone flourish in it, if you do not have a dedicated place in your home for the medical transcription work.

Make sure you always have medical transcription aids handy: If you want your productivity to beat that of your peers, you have to be equipped with all medical transcription aids possible. Get yourself a medical dictionary, a medical spell checker, and a medical transcription style guide issued by the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI). These aids will keep you be productive and help you produce high quality medical transcription work.

Keep updating your resume: Don’t let your resume become dormant. You need to keep circulating your medical transcription resume to get more opportunities. Keep updating your resume with all the medical transcription experience you are gaining.

Always remain HIPAA-compliant: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) specifies certain rules regarding keeping patient information confidential and secure. You should make sure you comply with HIPAA’s requirements. Being HIPAA-compliant adds credibility to your work.

We wish you all the luck for your chosen career!

Among the expectations in terms of deadlines and quality goals, a  medical transcriptionist has to deal with confidentiality expectations too. A  transcriptionist has to ensure that all the medical information that passes through his/her hands is never compromised. This is where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) comes into the picture. Now HIPAA not only expects you to deliver accurate records but also wants you to work under certain specifications, and rightly so. HIPAA’s expectations revolve around ensuring that the patients’ health information is always kept confidential.

In a medical transcription company, employees can comply with HIPAA easily as the company implements measures to keep patient data secure and confidential. A home-based transcriptionist, however, has to take measures on his/her own in order to ensure compliance with HIPAA. Here’s what you need to do:

• Use a firewall and an anti-virus software. Make sure these are updated on a regular basis. Try to keep a computer dedicated to medical transcription work so that no one else has access to the system.
• Use passwords to secure all the medical transcription data on your computer.
• Use a secure FTP network to send medical transcription files.
• Use a password to access your FTP site.
• While sending e-mails about your medical transcription work, make sure they are encrypted.
• Keep backing up your work on a separate drive for the purpose of business continuity.

So, how do you ensure security and confidentiality of medical information? Do you do anything different from what has been stated in this post?

Good things are good only if they are done/used/consumed in moderation. The medical transcription profession is good but it can affect you adversely if you don’t pay attention to certain things. The profession can give you stress if you are not disciplined enough. It can also affect your physical health if you are not careful enough. Let’s look at how the profession affects your health.

• Back pain: Sitting at one place for too long can cause strain not only in your back but also in your neck. Try to take a break every few minutes. The ideal way to take a break is by walking a bit. You need not venture out for that. Just walk through the rooms of your home and come back to your seat. The least you should do is stand and stretch yourself every few minutes during work.
• Wrist injuries: Extended hours with the keyboard and the mouse put your hands at a risk that many do not realize. Exercise your wrist when you take a break and after you have finished work. One of the best ways to avoid such injuries is to invest in ergonomic keyboard and mouse. These minimize the effects of long hours on the computer.
• Vision problems: When you spend hours in front of the computer screen, you are bound to strain your eyes. Use an anti-glare screen or wear anti-glare glasses while working. Take a break every 20 minutes. Close your eyes for a minute or so before getting back to work.

Take a little care and the profession won’t trouble your physical and mental well-being.

When you start your medical transcription career, you should know what the profession offers and what it expects. Looking only at the benefits of the profession will land you in trouble. Medical transcription requires a lot of mental preparation. You need to start right to have a smooth sail ahead.

It is important to start your work with a plan. It not only helps you manage time, be productive, but also gives you ample time for the non-working part of your life. Start by making a daily work routine and then see how you can spread your work over the working hours. A routine and a plan will keep your disciplined.

You have to keep in mind that you cannot allow distractions. Focus is the key to getting work done. Your commitment can go for a toss if there are distractions around. You have to be prepared to ignore the distractions and concentrate on your work.

It is important that you don’t get the deadlines get to you. As a medical transcriptionist, you will have to deal with stringent deadlines everyday; don’t let them alienate you from your personal life. A good personal life can help you rise in your professional life as well.

If you have chosen to work from home, be prepared to handle the highs and lows of income. Don’t overwhelm yourself by taking too much on your plate. Remember, if you deliver quality work, you will have good work coming in consistently. Don’t try to please too soon; you may end up exhausting yourself.

The medical transcription profession is a demanding one. It expects you to meet extremely stringent deadlines and high quality goals. It also expects you to keep the medical data secure. The medical transcriptionist cannot be complacent or he/she risks ruining his/her career. Today, I’ll talk about four mistakes that you should not commit if you want to do well in the profession.

Taking random, unplanned breaks: When you have to take a break, take logical breaks, not random ones. Avoid getting up in the middle of a task. In fact, you should take logical breaks compulsorily.

Attending to domestic chores during the planned working hours: You cannot let domestic worries trouble you when you are working. Attend to them only once your work is done. You have to learn to treat your home-office as an actual office from where you cannot attend to your household responsibilities.

Watching TV during your working hours: TV and medical transcription don’t go together. You cannot let other sounds distract you while you are transcribing. Don’t watch the TV even during your breaks as you run the risk of prolonging your breaks and lose focus.

Social networking while working: When working, close all e-mail clients and networking websites. I agree you need a minute’s break from time to time, but you cannot be online the whole time you are working. You can chose to access the social networking sites for a few minutes as a reward after you have completed a certain number of tasks.

These mistakes can cost you dearly. It is important you make an effort to keep yourself focused and motivated.