The home-based medical transcription job is more challenging than the office one. At home, distractions are plenty. The profession has high expectations of the transcriptionist in terms of productivity and quality. How do you ensure productivity amidst a challenging environment without compromising on quality? Let’s look a few simple productivity tips for the home-based medical transcriptionist.

• Take logical breaks. Taking voluntary breaks after the completion of one task or a group of tasks will help you prevent the arbitrary breaks that spoil the flow of your work and ruin your concentration.
• Use the abbreviation-expander. You will save a few seconds for each medical abbreviation, thus saving you a considerable amount of time at the end of day. Moreover, the application saves you from losing focus every time you come across an abbreviation. Without the expander, you would have to search for the expansion of acronyms, spoiling the flow of your work.
• Use shortcuts. The computer and the word processor offer several shortcuts for you to play with. You may not realize this but using shortcuts help make your work complete faster than when you are not using them. Remember, every minute is valuable when you are chasing the stringent deadline.
• Customize the word processor. Microsoft Word has a feature called Autocorrect which corrects/expands an input automatically when it is typed with a slight change of spelling or when its short form is typed. This helps you type faster. If you don’t use MS Word, you may find a similar feature in your word processor and if you don’t, create some macros.

Given the challenges of the home-based medical transcription job, only the most organized and disciplined can survive in the home-based job.