Medical Transcriptionist positions call for a certification with thorough training, specific skills such as fast typing, listening skills, and sometimes even a studied specialty like Neurology or Radiology. Due to the lengthy amount of knowledge included in each specialty of medicine, it is important to have a general knowledge of all of them with a special study of up to 3 of them.

It is important, on a resume, to make knowledge known of field requirements such as privacy and patient protection laws. There is an extensive list of things you will know and understand after MT training and here are the things that it is imperative to include on a resume.

• All training should be listed including the name of your course and date of completion.
• Any certification that has been earned should be highlighted.
• Accuracy is important in this field so naming your accuracy percentage is important.
• Just like accuracy, the number of words you can type per minute are important so be sure to include it.
• Any prior work in the MT field will add to a resume, and describe in detail which area you were transcribing in: pathology, nephrology etc.
• If you are looking to specifically work from home as an MT, list it on your resume as well as your personal office and equipment. It is important to already have the computer and hardware requirements met when adding them to your resume.
• State your job-related skills, computer proficiency and language skills give a full description of what you are capable of.
• Be sure to use some transcription ‘language‘ so that the employer looking at the resume knows you understand what you are talking about.
• List any computer qualifications or certifications acquired as well as any extra classes taken on customer service, personality development, etc.
• If you are currently working, be sure to list duties and specialties in detail.

Overall, it is all in the details. It is important to literally list everything you can think of or have been a part of in medical transcription on your resume. To truly stand out to employers seeking to hire, you must look appealing to their company on paper.

Meeting deadlines while ensuring high quality is not an easy task. You have got to be extremely disciplined and dedicated in order to achieve this. Ensuring high productivity will help you meet both deadlines and quality goals. How can you increase your medical transcription productivity? Here are a few easy tips.

• Plan your day, and stick to the plan. Yes, you have to make a plan on how you intend finishing the tasks you have for that day. It is important you make a realistic plan,  including scope for unplanned breaks.
• Irrespective of where you work from – home or office – keep away from e-mails and social networking sites during designated work time. You can always get back to these once you have finished your work. You may find social networking giving you a breather at times, but a two-min break can stretch to an hour without you realizing it. It is better to update your Facebook or Twitter status at leisure, after you have finished your work for the day.
• Plan and take logical breaks during work. You cannot be efficient if you keep sitting in one place for hours. Take a logical break every half an hour or so. Take a walk, talk to your co-worker, or stretch yourself, and then get back to work. Make sure your break doesn’t stretch for more than a few minutes – where possible, take breaks when natural breaks occur in your work, for example, one task is completed.
• Reward yourself at the end of a hard day at work. If your work plan tells you that you are going to have a long day, plan a reward that you can give yourself on completion of all your tasks for the day. You may choose to watch a movie, go out with friends, order in from your favorite restaurant, soak your feet in warm water, a long bubble bath, an evening out with your family, or dinner with the boys/girls. Plan just anything as long as it feels like a reward.
• Use the abbreviation expander, the AutoCorrect option in your word processor, and other shortcuts to save on time and effort while creating the medical records. This one should become a habit.

Is there any other tip you would like to share with our readers?

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.